e starry watches of the night, wide-eyed and grief-shaken, Katrine
took the lesson to heart both for father and lover; learned it with
heart and head as well; saw the disarming of criticism, the tolerance,
the selflessness which it would bring, and knew that it was good.

But, she demanded of herself, was she large-souled enough to acquire
such tolerance toward Francis Ravenel? Leaning on the window-ledge,
looking into the clouded darkness of the night, awaiting the hour to
give her father the potion that for a time relieved his pain, she went
over tenderly, bit by bit, the summer that had passed, that
flower-scented, love-illumined summer for which she felt she was to pay
with the happiness of a lifetime.

She lived again her first meeting with Frank under the beeches; the
recklessness of her own mood because of her father's drinking; Frank's
lonesomeness at his home-coming; the touching of hands on the old log;
the sympathy between them from the first, and at the end asked herself,
honestly, who was most to blame. She had done wrong to permit him to
kiss her the night under the pine-tree, but she would not have foregone
the memory of it for all the world had to offer.

On the last day about noon the pain left her father, and toward evening
he asked to be helped to his old place by the window, that he might see
the sun go down behind the mountains. "There's a letter of Mr.
Ravenel's I'd like you to see, Katrine," he said, motioning her to bring
him the carefully treasured bundle of Frank's writings.

After assisting him to find the desired letter, she sat at his feet with
a white face and fixed eyes as he read:

"I met Katrine to-day on the river-bank. She was well and beautiful and
happy. It makes me want to be a better man every time I see her. I want
to help to make her life happy--" The hand which held the letter
suddenly dropped lifeless.

"Father!" she cried. And again: "Oh, father, can you leave me like
this?" And as the truth came to her that she was alone, Nature was
merciful, and she fell unconscious by her father's body, with Frank's
letters lying scattered around her on the floor.

After her father's burial there followed the collapse which comes so
frequently to those women who have the power to bear great trials in
silence.

In the small, white bed, with vines reddening around the window and
shining into the room, Katrine lay, day after day, with the pallor of
death on her face and a horrible nau