"'I will not write the letter.'
"'Go on,' she said.
"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.
"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'
"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!
"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through all time by it,—just for Grey and the others.'
"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.
"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'
"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on, half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.
"'I thought they said,—"This is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing suddenly back, 'and I am going to be—an opera-singer.'