d to her brother. She wondered if
at last she knew.

"I do not know what to tell you," she murmured slowly. "I thought if I
talked with you I might be able to help you, but I am afraid now that I
cannot. He is a better man than you are woman, Barbara; because he has
builded with his hands, he has reared him a soul as well. He knows the
depths, and the heights are far more wonderful for such knowledge. Oh,
dear me, I wish I knew----"

She paused there, shaken by her own impotence. Doubt and aching regret
were overwhelming her.

"I have told Mr. Wickersham that I will not marry him." The brown head
burrowed lower and muffled the words. "I know that I could let no
other man so--so much as touch me now. Is that--caring enough?"

But Miss Sarah only half heard the question. She was expecting no
surrender now.

"----Nor how to advise you," she struggled on. "For you have lived as
all girls like you live. You've lived for yourself; hoped for
yourself; prayed for yourself--as all women pray, I suppose, directly
or indirectly. And yet is merely a question of whether you could live
with him in his world, day for day and night for night? Is it as
simple as that? I have told you what difference one day made with me.
Have you thought what it might mean to wake and realize that you must
live _without_ him, all the rest of your life?"

Miss Sarah had stopped hoping. And so there was sheer amazement in the
triumph which rose and drove the regret from her faded pink-and-white
face when the girl's dark-fringed eyes lifted.

Since Stephen O'Mara had brought her back to her father, Barbara had
wondered why she did not cry. Great tears were sliding noiselessly
down her cheeks when she raised her head.

"I've tried to think--I haven't dared," Barbara sobbed. "But he
doesn't want me now. He doesn't want the kind of a girl I am any more!"

Thus in her moment of capitulation did the girl's heart cry aloud the
one thought which, unknown to her, had been her unbearable pain. And
straightway Miss Sarah's illuminated countenance became a glorification
of her spirit. Silently she leaned over and folded the kneeling one
round.

Later she found it possible to speak.

"You have convinced me forever of the futility of all snap judgments,"
said she, and she marveled at the shyness in her own voice, "but you
could never convince me of that. You may go home now, Barbara, for you
have worn yourself out. But to-morrow I w