Mrs. Purdon put me on one side, and although she was physically incapable of moving her body by a hair’s breadth, she gave the effect of having risen to meet the newcomer.  “Well, Emma, here I am,” she said in a queer voice, with involuntary quavers in it.  As she went on she had it more under control, although in the course of her extraordinarily succinct speech it broke and failed her occasionally.  When it did, she drew in her breath with an audible, painful effort, struggling forward steadily in what she had to say.  “You see, Emma, it’s this way:  My ’Niram and your Ev’leen Ann have been keeping company—­ever since they went to school together—­you know that’s well as I do, for all we let on we didn’t, only I didn’t know till just now how hard they took it.  They can’t get married because ’Niram can’t keep even, let alone get ahead any, because I cost so much bein’ sick, and the doctor says I may live for years this way, same’s Aunt Hettie did.  An’ ‘Niram is thirty-one, an’ Ev’leen Ann is twenty-eight, an’ they’ve had ‘bout’s much waitin’ as is good for folks that set such store by each other.  I’ve thought of every way out of it—­and there ain’t any.  The Lord knows I don’t enjoy livin’ any, not so’s to notice the enjoyment, and I’d thought of cutting my throat like Uncle Lish, but that’d make ’Niram and Ev’leen Ann feel so—­to think why I’d done it; they’d never take the comfort they’d ought in bein’ married; so that won’t do.  There’s only one thing to do.  I guess you’ll have to take care of me till the Lord calls me.  Maybe I won’t last so long as the doctor thinks.”

When she finished, I felt my ears ringing in the silence.  She had walked to the sacrificial altar with so steady a step, and laid upon it her precious all with so gallant a front of quiet resolution, that for an instant I failed to take in the sublimity of her self-immolation.  Mrs. Purdon asking for charity!  And asking the one woman who had most reason to refuse it to her.

Paul looked at me miserably, the craven desire to escape a scene written all over him.  “Wouldn’t we better be going, Mrs. Purdon?” I said uneasily.  I had not ventured to look at the woman in the doorway.

Mrs. Purdon motioned me to remain, with an imperious gesture whose fierceness showed the tumult underlying her brave front.  “No; I want you should stay.  I want you should hear what I say, so’s you can tell folks, if you have to.  Now, look here, Emma,” she went on to the other, still obstinately silent; “you must look at it the way ’tis.  We’re neither of us any good to anybody, the way we are—­and I’m dreadfully in the way of the only two folks we care a pin about—­either of us.  You’ve got plenty to do with, and nothing to spend it on.  I can’t get myself out of their way by dying without going against what’s Scripture and proper, but—­” Her steely calm broke.  She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice:  “You’ve just got to, Emma Hulett!  You’ve just got to!  If you don’t,