in a vain perplexity. "Why, Milly!"

She moved the chair back out of his grasp, and turned to him again.

"I understand it now," she went on rapidly. "I know just what I feel and
think, and I thank my God it ain't too late. Don't you see I can't bear
to have your clothes hang where his belong? Don't you see 't would kill
me to have you sit in his chair? When I find puss there, it's a comfort.
If 't was you--I don't know but I might do you a mischief!" Her voice
sank, in awe of herself and her own capacity for passionate emotion.

Laurie Morse had much swift understanding of the human heart. His own
nature partook of the feminine, and he shared its intuitions and its
fears.

"I never should lay that up against you, Milly," he said kindly. "But we
wouldn't have these things. You'd come to Saltash with me, and we'd
furnish all new."

"Not have these things!" called Amelia, with a ringing note of
dismay,--"not have these things he set by as he did his life! Why, what
do you think I'm made of, after fifteen years? What did _I_ think I was
made of, even to guess I could? You don't know what women are like,
Laurie Morse,--you don't know!"

She broke down in piteous weeping. Even then it seemed to her that it
would be good to find herself comforted with warm human sympathy; but
not a thought of its possibility remained in her mind. She saw the
boundaries beyond which she must not pass. Though the desert were arid
on this side, it was her desert, and there in her tent must she abide.
She began speaking again between sobbing breaths:--

"I did have a dull life. I used up all my young days doin' the same
things over and over, when I wanted somethin' different. It _was_ dull;
but if I could have it all over again, I'd work my fingers to the bone.
I don't know how it would have been if you and I'd come together then,
and had it all as we planned; but now I'm a different woman. I can't any
more go back than you could turn Sudleigh River, and coax it to run
up-hill. I don't know whether 't was meant my life should make me a
different woman; but I _am_ different, and such as I am, I'm his woman.
Yes, till I die, till I'm laid in the ground 'longside of him!" Her
voice had an assured ring of triumph, as if she were taking again an
indissoluble marriage oath.

Laurie had grown very pale. There were forlorn hollows under his eyes;
now he looked twice his age.

"I didn't suppose you kept a place for me," he said, with an unconsci