So Asenath said nothing more.

The sleek black river beckoned to her across the snow as they went home.  A thought came to her as she passed the bridge,—­it is a curious study what wicked thoughts will come to good people!—­she found herself considering the advisability of leaping the low brown parapet; and if it would not be like Dick to go over after her; if there would be a chance for them, even should he swim from the banks; how soon the icy current would paralyze him; how sweet it would be to chill to death there in his arms; how all this wavering and pain would be over; how Del would look when they dragged them out down below the machine-shop!

“Sene, are you cold?” asked puzzled Dick.  She was warmly wrapped in her little squirrel furs; but he felt her quivering upon his arm, like one in an ague, all the way home.

About eleven o’clock that night her father waked from an exciting dream concerning the best method of blacking patent-leather; Sene stood beside his bed with her gray shawl thrown over her night-dress.

“Father, suppose some time there should be only you and me—­”

“Well, well, Sene,” said the old man sleepily,—­“very well.”

“I’d try to be a good girl!  Could you love me enough to make up?”

He told her indistinctly that she always was a good girl; she never had a whipping from the day her mother died.  She turned away impatiently; then cried out and fell upon her knees.

“Father, father!  I’m in a great trouble.  I haven’t got any mother, any friend, anybody.  Nobody helps me!  Nobody knows.  I’ve been thinking such things—­O, such wicked things—­up in my room!  Then I got afraid of myself.  You’re good.  You love me.  I want you to put your hand on my head and say, ‘God bless you, child, and show you how.’”

Bewildered, he put his hand upon her unbound hair, and said:  “God bless you, child, and show you how!”

Asenath looked at the old withered hand a moment, as it lay beside her on the bed, kissed it, and went away.

There was a scarlet sunrise the next morning.  A pale pink flush stole through a hole in the curtain, and fell across Asenath’s sleeping face, and lay there like a crown.  It woke her, and she threw on her dress, and sat down for a while on the window-sill, to watch the coming-on of the day.

The silent city steeped and bathed itself in rose-tints; the river ran red, and the snow crimsoned on the distant New Hampshire hills; Pemberton, mute and cold, frowned across the disk of the climbing sun, and dripped, as she had seen it drip before, with blood.

The day broke softly, the snow melted, the wind blew warm from the river.  The factory-bell chimed cheerily, and a few sleepers, in safe, luxurious beds, were wakened by hearing the girls sing on their way to work.