quietness with him, and I need not stay awake, because everything was so safe. That has been his power over me from the first--that he rested me. Sometimes I have been so tired of the feverish, restless way we have of continually amusing ourselves, as if we dare not stop, and of reasoning and wondering and arguing to no end. We are all introspection and retrospection, and we call it being analytical and clever. If it is being clever, then we are too clever. One gets so tired of it; one wishes one could stop thinking and know less--or more. He was not like that, and he rested me. That was it. He made life seem more simple. "Well, he rested me then, and, though I made one effort to send him away, I knew he would not go, and I did not try very hard. I did not want him to go. So when he refused to be sent away, an obstinate feeling came over me, and I said to myself that I would not do or say one unkind thing to him while he was there. I would be as gentle and natural with him as if--as if he had been some slight, paltry creature who was nothing, and less than nothing, to me. I should have been amiable enough to such a man if I had been indebted to him for such service." "Ah!" sighed Agnes, "but it could not end there!" "End!" said Bertha. "There is no end, there never will be! Do you think I do not see the bitter truth? One may call it what one likes, and make it as pathetic and as tragic and hopeless as words can paint it, but it is only the old, miserable, undignified story of a woman who is married, and who cares for a man who is not her husband. Nothing can be worse than that. It is a curious thing, isn't it, that somehow one always feels as if the woman must be bad?" Agnes Sylvestre laid a hand on her again without speaking. "I suppose I was bad in those days," Bertha continued. "I did not feel as if I was--though I dare say that only makes it worse. I deliberately let myself be happy. I let him be kind to me. I tried to amuse and please him. Janey got well, and the days were beautiful. I did all he wished me to do, and he was as good to me as he was to Janey. When you spoke of his being so gentle it brought everything back to me in a rush,--his voice, and his look, and his touch. There are so many people who, when they touch you, seem to take something from you; he always seemed to give you something,--protection, and sympathy, and generous help. He had none of the gallant tricks of other men, and he was often a little shy and restrained, but the night he held my hand in both his, and the moment he touched my shoulder, when I broke down so at the gate, I could not forget if I tried." "But, perhaps," said Agnes, sadly, "you had better try." Bertha looked up at her. "When I have tried for a whole year," she said, "I will tell you what success I have had." "Oh!" Agnes cried, desperately, "it will take more than a year." "I have thought it might," said Bertha; "perhaps it may take even two."