“You would not understand if I should tell you the terrible struggle it was for me to be thrown each day in the society of one as noble, as good as Irving Stanley, and not come at last to feel for him as a poor governess ought never to feel for the handsome, gifted brother of her employer. Oh, George, I prayed against it so much, prayed to be kept from the sin, if it were a sin, to have Irving Stanley mingled with every thought. But the more I prayed, the more the temptation seemed thrust upon me. The kinder, gentler, more attentive, grew his manners toward me. He never treated me as a mere governess. It was more like an equal at first, and then like a younger sister, so that few strangers took me for a subordinate, so kind were both Mrs. Ellsworth and her brother.” “And he,” the doctor gasped, looking wistfully in her face, “does he—do you think he loves _you_?” Adah colored crimson, but answered frankly, “He never told me so; never said to me a word which a husband should not hear; but—sometimes, I’ve left him abruptly lest he should speak, for that I knew would bring the crisis I so dreaded. I must tell him the whole then, and by my dread of doing this, I knew he was more than a friend to me. I was fearful at first that he might recognize me, but I was much thinner than when I saw him in the cars, while my hair, purposely worn short, and curling in my neck, changed my looks materially, so that he only wondered whom I was so much like, but never suspected the truth.” There was silence, a moment, and then the doctor asked, “How is all this to end?” The question brought into Adah’s eyes a fearful look of anguish, but she did not answer, and the doctor spoke again. “Have I found Lily only to lose her?” Still there was no reply, and the doctor continued, “You are my wife, Adah. No power can undo that, save death, and you are my child’s mother. For Willie’s sake, oh Adah, for Willie’s sake, forgive.” When he appealed to her as his wife, Adah seemed turning into stone; but the mention of Willie, touched the mother, and the iceberg melted at once. “For Willie, my boy,” she gasped, “I could do almost anything; I could _die_ so willingly, but—but—oh, George, that ever we should come to this. You a deserter, a traitor to your country—lame, disabled, wholly in my power, and begging of _me_, your outcast wife, for the love which surely is dead—dead. No, George, I do forgive, but never, never more can I be to you a wife.” There was a rising resentment now in the doctor’s manner, as he answered reproachfully: “Then surrender me at once to the lover hunting for me. Let him take me back where I can be shot, and that will leave you free.” Adah raised her hand deprecatingly, and when he had finished, rejoined: “You mistake Maj. Stanley, if you think he would marry me, knowing what I should tell him. It’s not for him that I refuse. It’s for myself. I could not bear it. I—”