It was ended then. She herself had ended it. He would never hear the new music she was practicing for him; they would not read together the “Essays of Elia” he had given her last week; she could never tell him— “I must catch the next train; Roger and I have a farewell dinner in New York to-day. Old fellow, I’m sorry to leave him. I suppose when I return I shall find him rusting out in Bensalem; for he’s determined to go there against all the arguments I can bring up. Good-bye, Marion.” “Good-bye,” she said, again, allowing her fingers to stay a moment in his hand. “God bless you, dear.” She remembered the blessing afterward; afterward, she remembered, too: “and forgive me.” Or did she imagine that? Why should he say that? How had he hurt her? He had only been like Roger. She had said—what did she say that he should ask her to become his wife when he had not once thought of it all winter—when he was going away for years without thinking of it. In her bewilderment she could not recall the terrible and true words she herself had spoken, she imagined them to be beyond everything more dreadful than she would dare think; they burned her through and through, these words that had said themselves. Were they hurting him every hour as they were hurting her? Impetuous she knew herself to be; frank to a fault Roger plainly told her that she was; often and often her outbursts were to her own heart-breaking; but nothing before had she ever done like this; there was no excuse for this, no healing; he would despise her as long as he lived, and she would have no power ever to forget. Shame that he understood, that he had all the time understood, was burning her up like a fever; that he was gone she was unfeignedly glad, that she might see his dear face no more, she sometimes prayed. Still, with it all, her life went on as usual; the errands down town, the calls, her Sunday-school class, her King’s Daughters’ meetings, her regular hours for practice, the cake-making, the sweeping, she even began to read one of the volumes of Ruskin she found on the table in his chamber, with her name and his initials written in each book; her life went on, her life with the heart gone out of it; her life went on, but herself seemed staying behind somewhere. It was a relief that Roger was away a part of every week, Roger, whom nothing escaped; the others saw nothing,—she believed there was nothing for them to see. IV. BENSALEM. All service ranks the same with God; If now, as formerly he trod Paradise, his presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work. —Robert Browning.