not say it. She opened her lips to speak once and again, but
no sound came from them.

"Sene! why, Sene, what ails you?"

He turned, and took her in his arms.

"Poor Sene!"

He kissed her, feeling sorry for her unknown trouble. He wondered why
she sobbed. He kissed her again. She broke from him, and away with a
great bound upon the snow.

"You make it so hard! You've no right to make it so hard! It ain't as if
you loved me, Dick! I know I'm not like other girls! Go home and let me
be!"

But Dick drew her arm through his, and led her gravely away. "I like you
well enough, Asenath," he said, with that motherly pity in his eyes;
"I've always liked you. So don't let us have any more of this."

So Asenath said nothing more.

The sleek black river beckoned to her across the snow as they went home.
A thought came to her as she passed the bridge,--it is a curious study
what wicked thoughts will come to good people!--she found herself
considering the advisability of leaping the low brown parapet; and if it
would not be like Dick to go over after her; if there would be a chance
for them, even should he swim from the banks; how soon the icy current
would paralyze him; how sweet it would be to chill to death there in his
arms; how all this wavering and pain would be over; how Del would look
when they dragged them out down below the machine-shop!

"Sene, are you cold?" asked puzzled Dick. She was warmly wrapped in her
little squirrel furs; but he felt her quivering upon his arm, like one
in an ague, all the way home.

About eleven o'clock that night her father waked from an exciting dream
concerning the best method of blacking patent-leather; Sene stood beside
his bed with her gray shawl thrown over her night-dress.

"Father, suppose some time there should be only you and me--"

"Well, well, Sene," said the old man sleepily,--"very well."

"I'd try to be a good girl! Could you love me enough to make up?"

He told her indistinctly that she always was a good girl; she never had
a whipping from the day her mother died. She turned away impatiently;
then cried out and fell upon her knees.

"Father, father! I'm in a great trouble. I haven't got any mother, any
friend, anybody. Nobody helps me! Nobody knows. I've been thinking such
things--O, such wicked things--up in my room! Then I got afraid of
myself. You're good. You love me. I want you to put your hand on my head
and say, 'God bless you, child, and show you how.'"