Scorching tears poured from Jeanie’s eyes. Tears like a fiery torrent, very different from those which had been wept for her mother. She sat down again on the log but turned her back to Kirsteen, covering her face with her hands. “It is just for that,” she said to herself, “just for that that I’m tempted most--just for that!” “I would have thought,” said Kirsteen, with intense and sorrowful indignation to think that where there was life and love there should be this perversity. “I would have thought that a touch of true love in the heart would save ye for ever and ever from all temptations of the kind.” “You would have thought!” cried Jeanie scornful in her passion, turning her soft angelic countenance, in which there were so many things unintelligible to her elder sister, all flushed and wild to Kirsteen. “And me that thought you would understand!” she cried. There was a pause, and Kirsteen’s heart ached with feelings inexpressible. She had never been accused of not understanding before, and it is a reproach which is hard to bear. She sat silent, painfully wondering into what strange places these young feet had wandered where she could not follow. She had expressed the only conviction that was possible to her one-ideaed soul. The touch of true love had been to herself the one and only touch, never to be obliterated by baser contact. She sat gazing wistfully into the dim air, perplexed and troubled, her eyes filling with tears, her heart with heaviness. To be tempted was the one thing which in her austere and spotless womanhood, a widowed maiden, Kirsteen could not understand. Jeanie had been sobbing passionately by her side for a minute or more, when suddenly she turned and flung herself again upon her sister, once more hiding her face in Kirsteen’s lap. “Oh!” she cried, “take me with you, Kirsteen! Do you not see now that I cannot be left? You’re holy like a saint, but me, I want more, I want something more. Is it not natural to be happy when you’re young--to get what you like, and see what’s bonny and bright, and get out into the world? I’m not one that can be patient and bide at home. Oh, Kirsteen! I cannot just sew my seam, and read my book like good girls--even with my mother here--and now that she’s gone--Kirsteen, Kirsteen! he will wile me away to my shame if you will not save me, you that are the only one.”