During the sad and weary months which ensued while the war dragged its slow length along, Dr. Gresham and Iola often met by the bedsides of the wounded and dying, and sometimes he would drop a few words at which her heart would beat quicker and her cheek flush more vividly.  But he was so kind, tender, and respectful, that Iola had no idea he knew her race affiliations.  She knew from unmistakable signs that Dr. Gresham had learned to love her, and that he had power to call forth the warmest affection of her soul; but she fought with her own heart and repressed its rising love.  She felt that it was best for his sake that they should not marry.  When she saw the evidences of his increasing love she regretted that she had not informed him at the first of the barrier that lay between them; it might have saved him unnecessary suffering.  Thinking thus, Iola resolved, at whatever cost of pain it might be to herself, to explain to Dr. Gresham what she meant by the insurmountable barrier.  Iola, after a continuous strain upon her nervous system for months, began to suffer from general debility and nervous depression.  Dr. Gresham saw the increasing pallor on Iola’s cheek and the loss of buoyancy in her step.  One morning, as she turned from the bed of a young soldier for whom she had just written a letter to his mother, there was such a look of pity and sorrow on her face that Dr. Gresham’s whole heart went out in sympathy for her, and he resolved to break the silence he had imposed upon himself.

“Iola,” he said, and there was a depth of passionate tenderness in his voice, a volume of unexpressed affection in his face, “you are wronging yourself.  You are sinking beneath burdens too heavy for you to bear.  It seems to me that besides the constant drain upon your sympathies there is some great sorrow preying upon your life; some burden that ought to be shared.”  He gazed upon her so ardently that each cord of her heart seemed to vibrate, and unbidden tears sprang to her lustrous eyes, as she said, sadly:—­

“Doctor, you are right.”

“Iola, my heart is longing to lift those burdens from your life.  Love, like faith, laughs at impossibilities.  I can conceive of no barrier too high for my love to surmount.  Consent to be mine, as nothing else on earth is mine.”

“Doctor, you know not what you ask,” replied Iola.  “Instead of coming into this hospital a self-sacrificing woman, laying her every gift and advantage upon the altar of her country, I came as a rescued slave, glad to find a refuge from a fate more cruel than death; a fate from which I was rescued by the intervention of my dear dead friend, Thomas Anderson.  I was born on a lonely plantation on the Mississippi River, where the white population was very sparse.  We had no neighbors who ever visited us; no young white girls with whom I ever played in my childhood; but, never having enjoyed such companionship, I was unconscious of any sense of privation.  Our parents spared no pains to make