her
heart.

The young moon was sinking in the west. She could not see it, but she
could see the fleecy clouds that reflected its light. How lovely they
were, moving wherever the light wind, high in the heavens, might desire.
They had no will, these clouds, but were wafted into the shadow or the
silvery brightness, living as they had the right to live, pliant to the
spirit of the strong wind.

The house was perfectly still. The little watch that Ellen had given her
when she went away to school told her that it lacked but a few minutes
of the hour when he had called her to come. All day she had questioned
and doubted and hesitated. She had asked her black mother to tell her
the story of her adoption that she might surely guard her virtue and
resist temptation; but now, looking into the night, she refused to
believe that this was temptation, rather it was a glorious opportunity
to give generously, without stint or questioning.

She slipped a coat over the white dress she was wearing, walked
stealthily into the hallway, lifted the latch and was under the stars.
No one had heard her, and she ran swiftly across the open yard, bright
in the moonlight, to the darkness of the trees.

Standing in the gloom of the path and looking back at the cabin she
hesitated. There were the roses by the porch and the goldenrod and
aster, bits of bright weed, growing in the sand. Close to her were the
chickens asleep upon their perches. She was leaving this friendly,
familiar home to enter the white world; and to enter, not even at the
kitchen door, but through a dark, hidden passage that no one but herself
could tread. She did not want to say good-by. Doubting, she took a step
toward the little house, and then the wind from the river blew in her
face and she fancied some one called her by name.

No, she would not go back. His love lifted her above her home, above her
doubting self, on, up to the clouds, the moon, to paradise. Love was an
immense power that hewed its way through the routine of life. It was
eternal, from the creation of the world.

The way was very dark to the grove, but overhead were the stars, and if
for a moment she felt fear, she stopped peering through the trees to
look to them for reassurance. There is no starlight so beautiful as that
of the southern sky where the heavenly bodies are not cold, sparkling
pinpricks, as in the North, but luminous globes that breathe a soft
radiance to the warm earth. They are compani