"but if we
thought so then, that is no reason for deceiving ourselves any longer."

She intended to mislead him, and she did.

"Very well," he replied; "we will not deceive ourselves; we will have a
good understanding with ourselves and with each other. Is there any
reason why we should not be at least good comrades now?"

"I know of none," she answered, meeting his eyes without wavering.

"Then let us act as such, and not like two silly children, afraid of
each other. Is that a compact?" he asked, smiling and extending his
hand.

"It is," she replied, smiling brightly in return as their hands clasped,
thus by word and act renouncing her dearest hopes without his dreaming
of the sacrifice.

_Chapter XXXIII_

INTO THE FULNESS OF LIFE

With the opening of cold weather the seeming betterment in Mrs.
Britton's health proved but temporary. As the winter advanced she failed
rapidly, until, unable to sit up, she lay on a low couch, wheeled from
room to room to afford all the rest and change possible. Day by day her
pallor grew more and more like the waxen petals of the lily, while the
fatal rose flush in her cheek deepened, and her eyes, unnaturally large
and lustrous, had in them the look of those who dwell in the borderland.

She realized her condition as fully as those about her, but there was
neither fear nor regret in the eyes, which, fixed on the glory invisible
to them, caught and reflected the light of the other world, till, in the
last days, those watching her saw her face "as it had been the face of
an angel."

No demonstration of sorrow marred the peace in which her soul dwelt the
last days of its stay, for the very room seemed hallowed, a place too
sacred for the intrusion of any personal grief.

Turning one day to her husband, who seldom left her side, she said,--

"My sorrow made me selfish; I see it now. Look at the good you have
done, the many you have helped; what have I done, what have I to show
for all these years?"

Just then Darrell passed the window before which she was lying.

"There is your work, Patience," Mr. Britton replied, tenderly; "you have
that to show for those years of loneliness and suffering. Surely, love,
you have done noble work there; work whose results will last for
years--probably for generations--yet to come!"

Her face lighted with a rapturous smile. "I had not thought of that,"
she whispered; "I will not go empty-handed after all. Perhaps He will
say of me