charms upon
her _husk_ as I am? Can this sad, sallow slip of a girl be the beaming,
shapely, British matron I contemplated with so innocently pleased an eye
half an hour ago? If, in all my designs, I could have the perfect
success which has crowned my efforts at self-disfigurement, I should be
among the most prosperous of my species.

I sit down as far from the window as the dimensions of the room will
allow, call Vick, who comes at first sneakingly and doubtful of her
reception, up on my lap, and take a book. It is the one nearest to my
hand, and I plunge into it haphazard in the middle.

This is the sentence that first greets me: "Her whole heart was in her
boy. She often feared that she loved him too much--more than God
himself--yet she could not bear to pray to have her love for her child
lessened."

Not a very difficult one to construe, is it? and yet, having come to the
end, and found that it conveyed no glimmering of an idea to my mind, I
begin it over again.

"Her whole heart was in her boy. She often feared that she loved him too
much--more than God himself--yet she could not bear to pray to have her
love for her child lessened."

Still no better! What _is_ it all about?

I begin over again.

"Her whole heart was in her boy," etc. I go through this process ten
times. I should go through it twenty, or even thirty, for I am resolved
to go on reading, but at the end of the tenth, my ear--unconsciously
strained--catches the sound of a step at the stair-foot. It is not the
footman's. It is firmer, heavier, and yet quicker.

Eight weary months is it since I last heard that footfall. My heart
pulses with mad haste, my cheeks throb, but I sit still, and hold the
book before my eyes. I will _not_ go to meet him. I will be as
indifferent as he! When he opens the door, I will not even look round, I
will be too much immersed in the page before me.

"Her whole heart was in her boy. She often feared that--"

The door-handle is turning. I _cannot_ help it! Against my will, my head
turns too. With no volition of my own--against my firmest intention--my
feet carry me hastily toward him. My arms stretch themselves out. Thank
God! thank God! whatever happens afterward, I shall still thank God, and
call him good for allowing it. I am in Roger's embrace. No more
mistakes! no more delays! he is here, and I am kissing him as I never
kissed any one--as I certainly never kissed _him_ in my life before.

Well, I suppose t