"I've never said this before,
hardly to myself, but I came very near not marrying my husband. I was
young and not romantically in love. He was ten years older and that
seemed frightening. If it had not been for my mother, who appreciated
him better than I, I doubt if I would have accepted him. Afterward, when
we had lived together for months and I had given my whole heart to him,
I used to waken in the night and shake with horror at the thought of
what I might have lost. When I realized what we would have missed
without our life together, I would grow chill with a perfectly
unreasoning fear.

"I asked him once if he had ever questioned that he wanted me," Mrs.
Pickens went on, "and he laughed and said not since the first May
morning when I came to church in a blue gown and sat across the aisle
from him. He surely knew his mind, but that's often the difference
between men and women!"

Another silence and then Mrs. Pickens went within.

Hertha lingered trying to conceive of a love that had in it no romance
and yet blossomed into passionate devotion. And as she strove to imagine
such a condition, as she called up Dick's image and saw him playing with
her in the snow, sitting by her at the opera, rowing with her in the
park, her brain proved for a time obedient; and then the air was
suddenly filled with the scent of orange blossoms.

"Oh, it's no use," she said despairingly, "I can't decide." And then in
a tremor of excitement and determination, "Next Sunday I mean to have
one more talk with Tom."

CHAPTER XXX

The usher at Siloam Church gave a second glance at the very pretty girl
whom with considerable ceremony he escorted to a seat. He did not for a
moment think of her as white, else resisting her request to remain in
the rear he would have placed her in the front pew; but he recognized
her as a stranger and wondered as he continued his duties where she
might hail from, and whether she might not be persuaded to regard Siloam
as her future church home.

Hertha, her curly hair pushed well about her face, sat in the corner of
a seat and scanned the congregation for Tom. She saw him after a few
moments in the middle of the center aisle, his forehead knit a little as
he followed the service, his whole posture one of comfortable repose. He
was enjoying his Sunday rest and, as a preacher's son should, found the
church a natural place in which to make himself at home. Hertha thought
she heard his voice as the c