's here an'
you've got to face it. Clelia, I've a good mind to tell you somethin' I
ain't ever told anybody."

"Yes," said Clelia indifferently, her mind upon herself. "Yes, tell me."

Sabrina folded her hands upon her lap and set her gaze straight forward,
and yet with a removed look, as if she had withdrawn into the past.

"I don't know as you ever knew, Clelia," she said, and Clelia at once
thought that it was as if she were reading from a book, "but when I was
about your age, I come near bein' married."

"Father said you were much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim
shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white
hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the sweet
uses of it.

"I guess he never knew about that particular one. Nobody knew that. I
had as good a time as you've had, Clelia. I liked him the same way. I've
thought of it, day in, day out, when I've seen you with Richmond Blake.
I've never been so near livin' since as I have when I've seen you an'
Richmond together out in that gardin, laughin' an' jokin' in amongst the
flowers. Well, he give me up, dear. He give me up."

Her hands took a firmer hold on each other. Her face convulsed into a
deeper grief; and Clelia, who had never seen her moved with any emotion
that concerned herself alone, gazed at her in awe, with her own passion
quieting as she confronted that of one so old, yet living still.

"Did you--have words?" she ventured.

"No, dear, no. I guess we couldn't have had, I felt so humble towards
him. I never forgot a minute how good it was to have him like me. No.
There was somebody else. You see he was terrible smart. He put himself
through college, an' then he met her, an' she was just as smart as he
was. Lively, too, I guess. I never see her. But I hadn't anything but my
good looks--I was real pretty then. I had that an' a kind of a way of
keepin' house an' makin' folks comfortable. Well, I found out he didn't
prize me; so I give him his freedom. An' he was glad, dear, he was
glad."

She rocked back and forth for a moment, in forgetfulness of any save the
long-past moment when she was alive.

"O Sabrina!" breathed the girl.

It recalled her. She straightened, and resumed the habit of an ordered
life.

"Now this is what I was comin' to," she said, "the way to bear it. It
ain't a light thing. It's a heavy one. A lot o' folks go through with
it, an' they take it different ways. Sometimes thei