"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.
"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.
"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'—looking out through the rain, in a dazed way.
"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense of the matter.'
"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.
"'You think that?'
"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether it was true or not. There,—that is the whole story. I never told it to Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."
"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."
A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,—starlight, when the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.