He could not bear her tears. The sight of her grief drove him from himself. Pausing before her, he said:
"Doris, I yield. Let it be as you say."
And he lifted her hand to his lips in adieu; though in his powerfully imposed self-restraint he could not be all tenderness. His tones were gentle, and in the look he cast upon her bowed figure there was no reproach.
He was gone; and Doris went back to the mother who was unconscious that she was wrecking the happiness of this devoted child; the only one left to her. One by one they had married and gone, and now in her darkened world she was enduring a more fearful weight of woe than blindness. Ralph, her youngest, and her darling, the Benjamin of her old age, had fled the country under the awful ban of murder. His employer, a hard man, had been found dead in his private office from a blow on the back of the head. Suspicion pointed to Ralph, who, poor, hot-headed fellow, had been heard to vow vengeance against the dead man for his harshness. A fellow clerk warned him in time to flee from the officers of the law. He could not go without seeing his mother. In the silence of the night he had clasped her trembling form in his stalwart young arms, and in broken, quivering tones, bade her trust in his innocence. "Mother, believe me, only believe me; I did not do it," and sped on in the darkness, an exile. She did believe in him. She would almost as soon have doubted her Savior's love. But her stern, unbending pride of race was wounded. Her loving heart was pierced in its tenderest spot, and in a few short weeks she was a fretful, peevish invalid, making wholesale but unconscious draughts upon her noble daughter's patience.
Five years had gone by since these household fetters had been forged for Doris. Young and lovely, she adorned every circle. Offers of marriage were unheeded, and her heart was untouched till Warner Douglas, the young physician, came. They had met when she was a school girl and he a student in the same town; and now it was revealed to her why he had chosen her place of residence as the starting point in his career. So they had loved and hoped on only to be crushed at last.
The day after her final rejection of his suit, the post brought a note that ran thus:
"Doris, good-bye; not for a day, or a week, but as long as may require to perfect my plans. I have spent a sleepless night, and this is my conclusion. There is one way out of this. Maddening as is your decision, I am forced to yield. But I shall not give you up without a struggle. I have determined to study the human eye as a specialty. The savings I had meant to devote to our united lives shall go to this end. If I do not write often and in lover-like fashion, it will be because I must be firm in my undertaking. When I have mastered the science, I hope to come back to you with healing in my hand for the mother for whose infirmities you sacrifice me. Do not think me bitter; I am trying to be kind. In any case, be my probation long or short, I shall be
"Ever yours,
"WARNER DOUGLAS."
Long Doris wept heart-breaking tears over this letter. Had she decided aright? She mused far into the night, and at last her tired spirit found comfort in the hope that her lover might one day unlock the prison doors of both her mother and herself. Next day and for many days she went about her duties mechanically, but her blind mother missed nothing, knew nothing. Wearisome vigils were those! Not for a moment could she trust her charge alone. With the perverseness of age she would try to grope her way about, and more than once had she wandered into danger. Besides this active, bodily vigilance, there were papers and books to read to her, and the post-office was fairly haunted by fruitless messages for tidings of the wandering boy. "How long, O Lord, how long?" was the burden of the mother's heart, and upon Doris fell the hopeless task of comforting.