station with me and give me the five dollars there.
So he did--and he bought the ticket, and put me in the cars."

Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the
pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held each
other without speaking.

They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a step in
the shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in the doorway.

"My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss
Evelina--Mrs. Ramy--it ain't you?"

Miss Mellins's eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from Evelina's
pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap of worn clothes
on the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza, who had placed herself
on the defensive between her sister and the dress-maker.

"My sister Evelina has come back--come back on a visit. She was taken
sick in the cars on the way home--I guess she caught cold--so I made her
go right to bed as soon as ever she got here."

Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice.
Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins's baffled
countenance: "Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip--a trip connected with
his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he comes back."

XII

What measure of belief her explanation of Evelina's return obtained
in the small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause to enquire.
Though she could not remember ever having told a lie before, she adhered
with rigid tenacity to the consequences of her first lapse from truth,
and fortified her original statement with additional details whenever a
questioner sought to take her unawares.

But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled conscience. For
the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of
the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had never thought
of questioning the inherited principles which had guided her life.
Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both
natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it
implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the
gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they
have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt
she could no longer trust in the goodness of God, and there was only a
black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters.

But there was little time to brood upon