All day the strong black women climbed the gorge and hill, their hips swinging, baskets of wine, trays of delicate edibles, pyramids of linen, balanced as lightly on their heads as were they no more in weight and size than the turban beneath; their arms hanging, their soft voices scolding the "pic'nees" who stumbled after them. Toward evening, Rachael and Kitty Hamilton walked down the mountain together, and lingered in the heavy beauty of the gorge. The ferns grew high above their heads, and palms of many shapes. The dark machineel with its deadly fruit, the trailing vines on the tamarind trees, the monkeys leaping, chattering with terror, through flaming hybiscus and masses of orchid, the white volcanic rock, the long torn leaves of the banana tree, the abrupt declines, crimson with wild strawberries, the loud boom of the sunset gun from Brimstone Hill--Rachael never forgot a detail of that last walk with her old friend. Hers was not the nature for intimate friendships, but Catherine Hamilton had been one of her first remembered playmates, her bridesmaid, and had hastened to companion her when she emerged from the darkness of her married life. But Catherine was an austere girl, of no great mental liveliness, and the friendship, although sincere, was not rooted in the sympathies and affections. She believed Rachael to be the most remarkable woman in the world, and had never dared to contradict her, although she lowered her fine head to no one else. But female virtue, as they expressed it in the eighteenth century, stood higher in her estimation than all the gifts of mind and soul which had been lavished upon Rachael Levine, and she was the first to desert her when the final step was taken. But on this evening there was no barrier, and she talked of her future with the man she was to marry. She was happy and somewhat sentimental. Rachael sighed and set her lips. All her girlhood friends were either married or about to be--except Christiana, who had not a care in her little world. Why were sorrow and disgrace for her alone? What have I done, she thought, that I seem to be accursed? I have wronged no one, and I am more gifted than any of these friends of mine. Not one of them has studied so severely, and learned as much as I. Not one of them can command the homage of such men as I. And yet I alone am singled out, first, for the most hideous fate which can attack a woman, then to live apart from all good men and women with a man I cannot marry, and who may break my heart. I wish that I had not been born, and I would not be dead for all the peace that is in the most silent depths of the Universe.