thing too
great to be accomplished--

"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to
tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!

"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."

He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.

"And you said--?"

"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was
hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
Mary Virginia, Padre!

"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the
level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
this.

"Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."

The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.

"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--

There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily