from them—even though it be but an error of innocence.
"Let me forget the crushing humiliation of the past month," she told herself, "I must try to be strong, reasonable, if not happy." She must find some calling, something to sustain herself, to occupy her hands and time. The soft, idle, pleasant existence offered by the friend would enervate rather than fortify—would force her back on herself and on useless regrets.
As she sat in her own room, holding the blank page of her coming life, and studying what the truth should be, there arose before her inner gaze two scenes of a girlish life; fresh, vivid were they, as of yesterday, though both were now of a buried past.
First she recalled the hour when sorrow caught her by the hand, dragged her from the couch of childhood to a darkened room where lay the sphinx-like clay of her mother—the lids closed forever over what had been loving gleams of sympathy—the hands crossed in still rigidity. Her little child heart had no knowledge of the mysteries—love, anguish, death—in whose shadow the zest of life withers. She knew their names but they stood afar off, a veiled and waiting trio.
She crept, sobbing, from that terrible semblance of a mother to the out-door sunshine, and the yard,
