therhood work--the
brotherhood of the House of Martha, you know. I think it would work
splendidly. Just look around and see what he has done. He has made this
charming cottage out of an old rattle-trap house. Everything you see in
one afternoon, and lots of provisions in the kitchen besides. Sisters
alone could never have done this."

Mother Anastasia turned to me.

"I will speak with you, outside," she said, and I followed her into the
little yard. As soon as we were far enough from the house to speak
without being overheard, she stopped, and turning to me, said:--

"You are not content with driving me from the life on which I had set my
heart, back into this mistaken vocation, but you are determined to make
my lot miserable and unhappy. And not mine only, but that of that
simple-hearted and unsuspecting girl. I do not see how you can be so
selfishly cruel. You are resolved to break her heart, and to do it in
the most torturing way. But you shall work her no more harm. I do not
now appeal to your honor, to your sense of justice; I simply say that I
shall henceforth stand between you and her. What misery may come to her
and to me from what you have already done I do not know, but you do no
more."

I stood and listened with the blood boiling within me.

"Marcia Raynor," I said--"for I shall not call you by that title which
you put on and take off as you please--I here declare to you that I
shall never give up Sylvia. If I never speak to her again or see her I
shall not give her up. I make no answer to what you have charged me
with, but I say to you that as Sylvia's life and my life cannot be one
as I would have it, I shall live the life that she lives, even though
our lives be ever apart. For the love I bear her, I shall always do the
work that she does. But I believe that the time will come when people,
wiser than you are, will see that what I proposed to do is a good thing
to do, and the time will come when a man and a woman can labor side by
side in good works, and both do better work because they work together.
And to Sylvia and to my plan of brotherhood, I shall ever be constant.
Remember that."

Without a word or change in her expression she left me, went into the
house, and closed the door behind her. I did not wish to make a scene,
which would give rise to injurious gossip, and therefore walked away,
though as I did so I turned to look in at the open window, but I did not
see Sylvia; I only saw the bandage