rstand. God knows.'

"So I wrote on a bit, and then I said,--for I felt sorry for the girl,
though she was doing it for Grey,--I said,--

'"Lizzy, I'll be plain with you. There never was but one human being loved
you, perhaps. When he was dying, he said, "Tell my wife to be true and
pure." There is a bare possibility that you can be both as an
opera-singer, but he never would believe it. If you met him in heaven, he
would turn his back on you, if you should do this thing.'

"I could not see her face,--her back was towards me,--but the hand on the
window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue
about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a
physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow
nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I
tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and
pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I hate such women,"
vehemently.

"Men like you always do," quietly. "But I am not one of them."

"No, nor Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the
apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would
offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.'"

"'_Allegory_'--eh? You forget your story, I think, Doctor Blecker,"--with
a frown.

The Doctor stopped to help her to jelly, with a serious face, and then
went on. "She turned round at last. I did not look up at her, only said,--

"'I will not write the letter.'

"'Go on,' she said.

"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.

"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'

"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!

"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through
all time by it,--just for Grey and the others.'

"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.

"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle
Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer
to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture
of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their
souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'

"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on,
half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.

"'I thought they said,--"T