so."

Then I put on my hat and prepared to go out, and friend Afton said it was
a relief to have one so obliging in the house.

"Farewell to thee," I said to friend Jordan.

She stood inside my doorway and looked at me. "'Come unto Me, all ye that
labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,'" she said, and moved
like a spirit toward me, placed her lips upon my cheek, and went in and
closed the door. It was the first time any woman save my mother had ever
kissed me.

Those words made me feel that they applied to me, youth is so vain and
exacting even of the Lord's words. Nevertheless, as I went along the dark
streets I heard them ringing in my ears with such a benign meaning as I
never had understood in them before.

Long I walked the streets, lost in much thought and contemplation, and I
felt what was weakness leaving me, and I deemed how heavy were some yokes
compared to mine--friend Barbara's, for instance, she who must be
surrounded and held in by unsympathizing moods. I fain would have helped
her more than I did, but any further succor only meant a further offering
of my feeling for her, and _that_ she was as powerless to accept as I was
to make her accept it. Long I walked the streets, and had the hopeful,
helping words around and within me. And late in the night I turned my
wearied steps toward friend Afton's, and once more was entering the house,
when, as though an angel--as though the Lord above--had spoken to me from
high overhead, in grave, solemn, holy voice came the words, "Come unto Me,
all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." And I
turned my eyes above as I hope to turn them on the last Vast Day, when
methinks those words may again be spoken and call forth a mighty response.
But what was that white form so far above, even upon the sill of my
window, three stories from the ground? With a great terror grown upon me I
rushed into the street, and saw far up there, far in the night, friend
Jordan standing out in the darkness with hands supplicating the stars,
saying those words. This was why she had desired to rest in my room: with
the cunning of insanity, she had known that the windows of her own room
were nailed down, and so on the instant had thought of mine as a possible
means of reaching to her stars. With every limb frozen, it seemed, by
sudden petrification, I had no power to unclose my lips, but I made a
sound like a groan, I know, and then I saw her reach up high,