untry
are striving to be unnatural. By the blood----"

"John."

He wheeled about and looked at her. "But I ask you if it isn't enough to
make a saint pull out his hair? Simply opposed her marriage, used
legitimate argument, and afterward begged like a dog. Isn't it enough to
make me spurn the restraints of the church and take up the language of
the mud-clerk?"

"No, dear; nothing should prompt you to do that. You have a soul to be
saved."

"But is it necessary that my life should be tortured out of me in order
that my soul may be saved? I don't care to pay such a price. Is it put
down that I must be a second Job? Is a boil the sign of salvation?"

"For goodness' sake don't talk that way," she pleaded, but she had to
turn her face away to hide her smile from him.

"But I've got to talk some way. Just reflect on her treatment of me and
how I have humbled myself and whined at her feet. And I ask what may we
not expect of such a creature? Is it that she wants to be different from
anyone else? Let me tell you one thing: The woman who seeks to be
strongly individualized may attain her aim, but it leads to a sacrifice
of her modesty. I say she is in danger of disgracing herself."

Mrs. Cranceford shook her head. "You wait and we shall see. No member of
my family was ever disgraced. I may be distressed at her peculiarities,
at times, but I shall never be afraid for her conduct."

Early the next morning a negro brought a letter from Louise. Mrs.
Cranceford hastened to the office to read it to the Major. It appeared
to have been written with care and thus was it worded:

"My Dear Mother:--I am thankful that I am not to look upon the surprise
and sorrow you must feel in reading this letter. I hardly know how to
rake together and assort what I desire to say, but I will do the best I
can, and if you fail to understand me, do not charge it against
yourself, but list it with my other faults. What I have recently gone
through with is quite enough to unstring the nerves of a stronger woman
than I am, and what must be my condition? Worn out and weary of any life
that I could conceive of here--don't you see how I am floundering about?
But give me time and in all honesty you shall know the true state of my
mind. Many a time father has said that he did not understand me, and
more than once you have charged me with being strange. But I am sure
that I have never tried to be mysterious. I have had thoughts that would
not have appear