"What? anything!" he said. "I know what you are, Hester! you have life before you as I have; and happy or not happy, we have all its duties to do--not one thing, but a multitude. Come among your own people, to your own home--you have authority to exercise, charities and kindness to spread around you. You are no less yourself, because, if you will, you are disappointed and deceived in me--I will bear my burden as it is just I should; but, Hester, it becomes you to be no less brave; you must take up yours." I gazed upon him with amazement; involuntarily my heart responded to this call he made upon me. No one had ever bidden me rise and work before; but when I heard his voice, I suddenly acknowledged that this was the want of my life. I was quite in the mood for it; I might have gone into a nunnery, or joined a sisterhood of mercy, had I been a Catholic, or in a country where such things were. I immediately leaped upon a wild imaginative vision of those things which he described so soberly as the duties of life. I took the heroic view of them at once; I had no eye for patience and meekness, and such tame virtues. My rapid glance sought out the great self-sacrifices, the privations of voluntary humility; I was ready to walk over the burning ploughshares, to be a martyr at once. Yes! I began to be ashamed of my expectation that he would plead, and pray, and humble himself at my feet, and that I, injured and deceived, would spurn him from me. I was ashamed of resenting so bitterly my own unhappiness. In a moment I had reached the opposite extreme. What was happiness? a mere bubble on the surface. Duty and labor were the zest of life. With the speed of lightning these thoughts passed through my mind, and all the time he sat gazing at me across the table. I think he was scarcely prepared for my answer; for he met the first words with a startled look of mingled embarrassment and joy. "When do you wish to go home?" I said. "I am ready now." "Ready now--to go home?" he exclaimed, with a flush of surprise and delight, rising to come to me; but he caught my abstracted, pre-occupied eye, and, with a deeper blush of mortification, sat down again. "You cannot come too soon, Hester," he continued, in a subdued and disappointed tone, "for everything is disorganized and out of order--there is the greatest want of you--though I will not say how I myself long to see you in your proper place--will you come to-morrow?" "There are some things to do," I said, vacantly, delaying without any purpose in the delay. "Will Monday do?" "Yes, yes!" he said, with eagerness. "I will come for you then; and now, I go away in hope."