“Oh, father,” she begged, “help me to see what I ought to do! I know mother wants me to marry Jeff--she doesn’t say a word about it, but I feel all the time that it is making her last days full of sorrow. It seems to me sometimes that I can’t stand it another minute, that I must give up, because it will make her happy. Would it help her, father, if I did?” Dr. Ware laid his hand upon her shoulder. Even in her wretchedness the action gave her a little thrill of pleasure, for it was nearer a caress than she could remember he had ever given her. “Nothing can help your mother now, child. With her, it is a matter of a few months, or weeks, or, perhaps, even days. It would make her happy for that little time--I know it as well as you do. You could feel that you had enabled her to end her days in peace. But whether or not you ought to sacrifice your sense of right to your sense of duty to her is something that only you can decide.” “I know it, father,” she answered in low tones as she rose to her feet and wiped the tears from her eyes. She went out into the yard, gay with the luxuriant blooms of early summer. The white petunias sent up their fragrance and the memories it brought pierced her very heart with poignant sweetness. She went on into the grape arbor and sat down in its cool shadows, asking herself why it was that she could keep her own soul clean only at the expense of another’s happiness. “My happiness, Jeff’s happiness,” she thought, “they are of our own making and we can choose our own conditions. But mother, poor, dear, little mother, so sick, with such a little while to live, and her happiness so bound up in this! And if I do it I shall feel all my life that it was wrong, that my soul isn’t clean. Oh, mother, how can I become a part of this abomination of slavery, this vile, accursed thing! I’d be glad to die, a hundred times over, for you--but to live and be a part of such wickedness-- Oh, mother, how can I? How can I?” The end came sooner than they expected. On a hot afternoon in midsummer, when the late, red rays of the sun, shining through the half-closed shutters, lay in bands across the floor, Mrs. Ware called Rhoda. “Come close, honey, down beside me,” she said, and Rhoda knelt at the bedside. Her mother slipped a feeble arm around her neck. “You’ve been a dear, loving daughter to me,” she said, “even if we’ve thought so differently about some things. You are like your father, Rhoda, and that has always been a pleasure to me. You’ve wanted to make me happy, just as he always has, and in almost everything you have. No mother ever had a better, dearer daughter than you, honey.” “Oh, mother,” Rhoda exclaimed, the tears welling into her eyes, for in the pale, pitiful face she saw the shadow of the death angel’s wing and felt his near approach in the chill that struck into her own breast. “Dear mother, I’ve never done half enough for you, never been half as good and loving to you as you deserved!”