of this engagement and would be glad to be free,
that the last weight was lifted from her heart. She had been truly
attached to him as she was to almost every one with whom she came in
daily contact, and this affection was not altered. Hers was such a
loving nature that it was as natural for her to love those about her as
for a young vine to cling to everything that it touches. Every instinct
of her heart was a tender, sensitive tendril of affection, and all these
soft and growing tendrils reaching out in the loneliness of her life had
clung even to William Pressley, as a fine young vine will twine round a
hard cold rock when it can reach nothing softer or warmer or higher. Her
own rich, warm, loving nature had indeed so wreathed his coldness and
hardness that she could not see him as he really was. And now--without
any change in either the vine or the rock--everything was wholly
different. It was as if a tropical storm had suddenly lifted all these
clinging tendrils away from the unresponsive rock and had borne them
heavenward into the eager arms of a living oak.

She knew now the difference between the love that a loving nature gives
to all, and the love which a strong nature gives to only one. Her heart
was beating so under this new, deep knowledge of life, that she feared
lest the man whom she loved might hear. Yet she sat still with her
little hands tightly clasped on her lap, as if to hold herself firm, and
she held herself from looking round, though the silence continued
unbroken. William must be told before she might listen to the words
which she so longed to hear from Paul's lips. It was noble of him to
hold them back. Every moment that she had been sitting by the hearth she
had been expecting to hear them. So that she sat now in tense, quivering
suspense, waiting, fearing, longing, dreading, through this strange,
long silence; filled only by the sighing of the wind-harp and the
crackling of the fire. And then, being a true woman, she could endure it
no longer, and turning slightly she gave him a shy, timid glance. As she
looked she cried out in terror.

His head, which had been so eagerly raised a moment before, had fallen;
his eyes, which had been aglow but an instant since, were closed. The
effort, the agitation, had been too great for his slight strength. The
strong spirit, impatient of the weak flesh, was again slipping away from
it.

She thought he was dying, and forgetting everything but her love for