“I have borne it by myself so far,” Maria would think; “I can bear it by myself the rest of the way.”

Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing:  “Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come near to see me die!  And I love you,—­I love you so in spite of everything.”

Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story.  He would perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did.  Yet, on the contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him directly out to kill the man she loved.  And again she would burn with rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap’s condescension to a legal marriage.  He was willing.

“You are not willing,” she would whisper fiercely at the night candle.  “You do not love me any more.”

The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for hours, living over their stolen life together.  And she puzzled herself trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why all these things should happen.  The mystery to come is not greater than the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by his name.

At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in a spark:  the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best prayer of thanks to Almighty God.

Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Angelique came in at twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home.  The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes, while Angelique sat down and held Maria’s hand.  Perhaps invisible streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl.  She smiled with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.  Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.

Angelique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was spared the effort of talking or listening.  It was a fixed look of penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and making her one with you.  No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it.  She merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through the hearts of men.

The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an appealing creature as Maria Jones.  When she talked to the triangular little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather than its people; so that after Angelique went away Maria often fell asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or under the cool shadows of rocks.