“I don’t understand you.  I wish—­Rachel, can’t you make a friend of me, since you have no other?”

“I will tell you as well as I can,” she replied, “what my mother used to say.  She said we must act rightly.”

“That is true,” I replied; “and what else did she say?”

“She said, that that would only be the outside life, but the inside life must be right too, must be pure and strong, and that the way to make it pure and strong was to learn to bear.”

“Still,” I urged, “I wish you would find a better home.  You cannot learn to bear any more patiently than you do.”

She shook her head.

“That shows that you don’t know,” she answered.  “It seems to me right to remain.  Why, you know they can’t hurt me any.  Suppose they scold me when I am not to blame, and my temper rises,—­for I am very quick-tempered”—­

“Oh, no, Rachel!”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Browne!  Suppose my temper rises, and I put it down, and keep myself pleasant, do I not do myself good?  And thinking about it in this way, is not their unkindness a benefit to me,—­to the real me,—­to the soul of Rachel Lowe?”

I hardly knew what to say.  Somehow, she seemed away up above me, while I found that I had, in common with the Brewsters, only in a different way, taken for granted my own superiority.

“All this may be true,” I remarked, after a pause, “but it is not the common way of viewing things.”

“Perhaps not,” she answered.  “My mother was not like other people.  My father was a strong man, but he looked up to her, and he loved her; but he killed her at last,—­with his conduct, he killed her.  But when she was dead, he grew crazy with grief, he loved her so.  He talked about her always,—­talked in an absent, dreamy way about her goodness, her beauty, her white hands, her long hair.  Sometimes he would seem to be whispering with her, and would say, softly,—­’Oh, yes!  I’ll take care of Rachel! pretty Rachel! your Rachel!’”

I longed to have her go on; but we had now reached the bars, and she was not willing to walk farther.

“I have been talking a great deal about myself,” she said; “but you know you kept asking me questions.”

“Yes, Rachel, I know I kept asking you questions.  Do you care?  I may wish to ask you others.”

“Oh, no,” she replied; “but I could not answer many questions.  I have only a few thoughts, and know very little.”

I watched her into the house, and then walked slowly homewards, thinking, all the way, of this strange young girl, striving thus to stand alone, working out her own salvation.  I passed a pleasant night, half sleeping, half waking, having always before my eyes that white face, earnest and beautiful, as it looked up to me in the winter starlight, and in my ears her words, “Is not their unkindness a benefit to me,—­to the real me,—­to the soul of Rachel Lowe?”