Then he went into his room to look at Del’s photograph awhile before he burned it up; for he meant to burn it up.

Asenath, when she had locked her door, put her lamp before the looking-glass and tore off her gray cape; tore it off so savagely that the button snapped and rolled away,—­two little crystal semicircles like tears upon the floor.

There was no collar about the neck of her dress, and this heightened the plainness and the pallor of her face.  She shrank instinctively at the first sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape was folded, but shut it resolutely.

“I’ll see the worst of it,” she said with pinched lips.  She turned herself about and about before the glass, letting the cruel light gloat, over her shoulders, letting the sickly shadows grow purple on her face.  Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin into her hands, and so, for a motionless half-hour, studied the unrounded, uncolored, unlightened face that stared back at her; her eyes darkening at its eyes, her hair touching its hair, her breath dimming the outline of its repulsive mouth.

By and by she dropped her head into her hands.  The poor, mistaken face!  She felt as if she would like to blot it out of the world, as her tears used to blot out the wrong sums upon her slate.  It had been so happy!  But he was sorry for it, and all that.  Why did a good God make such faces?

She slipped upon her knees, bewildered.

“He can’t mean any harm nohow,” she said, speaking fast, and knelt there and said it over till she felt sure of it.

Then she thought of Del once more,—­of her colors and sinuous springs, and little cries and chatter.

After a time she found that she was growing faint, and so stole down into the kitchen for some food.  She stayed a minute to warm her feet.  The fire was red and the clock was ticking.  It seemed to her home-like and comfortable, and she seemed to herself very homeless and lonely; so she sat down on the floor, with her head in a chair, and cried as hard as she ought to have done four hours ago.

She climbed into bed about one o’clock, having decided, in a dull way, to give Dick up to-morrow.

But when to-morrow came he was up with a bright face, and built the kitchen fire for her, and brought in all the water, and helped her fry the potatoes, and whistled a little about the house, and worried at her paleness, and so she said nothing about it.

“I’ll wait till night,” she planned, making ready for the mill.

“O, I can’t!” she cried at night.  So other mornings came, and other nights.

I am quite aware that, according to all romantic precedents, this conduct was preposterous in Asenath, Floracita, in the novel, never so far forgets the whole duty of a heroine as to struggle, waver, doubt, delay.  It is proud and proper to free the young fellow; proudly and properly she frees him; “suffers in silence”—­till she marries another man; and (having had a convenient opportunity to refuse the original lover) overwhelms the reflective reader with a sense of poetic justice and the eternal fitness of things.