After she got home from meeting that Sunday, Sylvia Crane did not know how to pass the time until the evening.  She could not keep herself calm and composed as was her wont on the Sabbath day.  She changed her silk for a common gown; she tried to sit down and read the Bible quietly and with understanding, but she could not.  She turned to Canticles, and read a page or two.  She had always believed loyally and devoutly in the application to Christ and the Church; but suddenly now, as she read, the restrained decorously chanting New England love-song in her maiden heart had leaped into the fervid measures of the oriental King.  She shut the Bible with a clap.  “I ain’t giving the right meaning to it,” she said, sternly, aloud.

She put away the Bible, went into the pantry, and got out some bread and cheese for her luncheon, but she could eat nothing.  She picked the apple blossoms and arranged them in the copper-gilt pitcher on the best-room table.  She even dusted off the hair-cloth sofa and rocker, with many compunctions, because it was Sunday.  “I know I hadn’t ought to do it to-day,” she murmured, apologetically, “but they do get terrible dusty, and need dusting every day, and he is real particular, and he’ll have on his best clothes.”

Finally, just before twilight, Sylvia, unable to settle herself, had gone over to her sister’s for a little call.  Richard never came before eight o’clock, except in winter, when it was dark earlier.  There was a certain half-shamefaced reserve about his visits.  He knew well enough that people looked from their windows as he passed, and said, facetiously, “There goes Richard Alger to court Sylvy Crane.”  He preferred slipping past in a half-light, in which he did not seem so plain to himself, and could think himself less plain to other people.

Sylvia, detained at her sister’s by the quarrel between Cephas and Barnabas, had arisen many a time to take leave, all palpitating with impatience, but her sister had begged her, in a distressed whisper, to remain.

“I guess you can get along without Richard Alger one Sunday evening,” she had said finally, quite aloud, and quite harshly.  “I guess your own sister has just as much claim on you as he has.  I dunno what’s going to be done.  I don’t believe Charlotte’s father will let her in the house to-night.”

Poor Sylvia had sunk back in her chair.  To her sensitive conscience the duty nearest at hand seemed always to bark the loudest, and the precious moments had gone by until she knew that Richard had come, found the stone before the door, and gone away, and all her sweet turmoil of hope and anticipation had gone for naught.

Sylvia, lying there awake that night, her mind carrying her back over all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of everything.  Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics.  “He’d got ’most out of his track for once,” she groaned out softly, “but now he’s pushed back in so hard he can’t get out again if he wants to.  I dunno how he’s going to get along.”