"And what is that? What were you thinking or dreaming of, when I awakened you just now," the young man asked. "I wasn't dreaming at all. I was wide awake. I was wondering how--" with an effort, after a momentary hesitation, and in a tone so low that he barely heard, "how a girl might earn a living for several persons--for a whole family." And then, after a longer pause, a quick breath, and a sudden deepening of the rare red of her cheek, "So that her mother need not work so hard." It was the first time that she had spoken to him of this secret wish, so long cherished. She had, indeed, seldom mentioned her mother to him in any manner whatever. The reserve was not in the least because she was ashamed of her--such a feeling was unknown to Doris. She respected her mother and loved her, knowing, as no one else could know, how good a mother she was, how utterly unselfish, how absolutely upright, before the perpetual necessity which drove her to earn the family's bread in the only way that she knew. With her whole heart Doris loved and honored her mother. But, alas! their tastes were so unlike, their thoughts were so different, their whole lives were so far apart. And neither love nor honor nor any other of all the tenderest, noblest feelings of the truest heart, can ever bring together those whom cruel nature has set forever apart. For it is one of the mysteries of the sorrow of living that the deep rivers of many earnest lives are thus set to run side by side, and yet forbidden ever to mingle from the beginning to the end; from the unknown fountain of life to the unsounded sea of death. Lynn had noticed more than once that a shadow fell over Doris's gentle spirits whenever, on their strolls together, they caught a glimpse of Sidney. It was usually in the distance that they saw her, going up or down the big road, with her long, free, fearless step, her bonnet on the back of her head, and her knitting-needles flying as she walked. For, notwithstanding that Lynn had gone to her house almost daily now for weeks past, she had managed, by hook or by crook,--as she would have expressed it,--to hold to her original intention of keeping out of the way, of giving him a fair field and no favor, as she said to herself. Yet the young man had gathered, nevertheless, although he scarcely knew how, a tolerably correct impression of the compelling personality of Doris's mother. Little by little he had begun, consequently, to perceive the unusual and contending influences which had made this beautiful girl what she was; and the knowledge caused him to wonder what she would become, now that she was beginning to be herself, now that the strong forces of her own character were already in revolt.