n fell on the pillow.
Then I slept for an hour, worn out with grief and exhaustion, and when
presently I awoke with a start, I saw that she had left my side, and
that her muslin dressing-gown was missing from the chintz-covered chair
where it had lain. When I called her in alarm, she came through the
doorway that led to the kitchen, freshly dressed, with a coffeepot in
her hand.

"For God's sake, Sally," I implored, "don't make coffee for me!"

"I've made it, dear," she answered. "I couldn't let you go out without a
mouthful to eat. You did not sleep a wink."

"And you?" I demanded.

"I didn't sleep either, but then I can rest all day." Her lip trembled
and she pressed her teeth into it. "By the time you are dressed, Ben,
breakfast will be ready."

Her eyes were red and swollen, her mouth pale and tremulous, all her
radiant energy seemed beaten out of her; yet she spoke almost
cheerfully, and there was none of the slovenliness of sorrow in her
fresh and charming appearance. I dressed quickly, and going into the
sitting-room, drank the coffee she had made because I knew it would
please her. When it was time for me to start, she went with me to the
door, and turning midway of the block, I saw her standing on the steps,
smiling after me, with the sun in her eyes, like the ghost of herself as
she had stood and smiled the morning after my failure. In the evening I
found her paler, thinner, more than ever like the wan shadow of herself,
yet meeting me with the same brave cheerfulness with which she had sent
me forth. Could I ever repay her? I asked myself passionately, could I
ever forget?

The dreary summer weeks dragged by like an eternity; the autumn came and
passed, and at the first of the year I was sent down, with a salary of
ten thousand dollars, to build up traffic on the Tennessee and Carolina
Railroad, which the Great South Midland and Atlantic had absorbed. Sally
went with me, but she was so languid and ill that the change, instead of
invigorating her, appeared to exhaust her remaining vitality. She lived
only when I was with her, and when I came in unexpectedly, as I did
sometimes, I would find her lying so still and cold on the couch that I
would gather her to me in a passion of fear lest she should elude the
lighter grasp with which I had held her. Never, not even in her
girlhood, had I loved her with the intensity, the violence, of those
months when I hardly dared clasp her to me in my terror that she mi