“Read.  Have you read to the last?” said Dahlia.  “Speak it.  Let me hear you.  He writes it....  Yes? you will not?  ‘Husband,’ he says,” and then she took up the sentences of the letter backwards to the beginning, pausing upon each one with a short moan, and smiting her bosom.  “I found it here, Rhoda.  I found his letter here when I came..  I came a dead thing, and it made me spring up alive.  Oh, what bliss to be dead!  I’ve felt nothing...nothing, for months.”  She flung herself on the bed, thrusting her handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the outcry.  “I’m punished.  I’m punished, because I did not trust to my darling.  No, not for one year!  Is it that since we parted?  I am an impatient creature, and he does not reproach me.  I tormented my own, my love, my dear, and he thought I—­I was tired of our life together.  No; he does not accuse me,” Dahlia replied to her sister’s unspoken feeling, with the shrewd divination which is passion’s breathing space.  “He accuses himself.  He says it—­utters it—­speaks it ‘I sold my beloved.’  There is no guile in him.  Oh, be just to us, Rhoda!  Dearest,” she came to Rhoda’s side, “you did deceive me, did you not?  You are a deceiver, my love?”

Rhoda trembled, and raising her eyelids, answered, “Yes.”

“You saw him in the street that morning?”

Dahlia smiled a glittering tenderness too evidently deceitful in part, but quite subduing.

“You saw him, my Rhoda, and he said he was true to me, and sorrowful; and you told him, dear one, that I had no heart for him, and wished to go to hell—­did you not, gbod Rhoda?  Forgive me; I mean ‘good;’ my true, good Rhoda.  Yes, you hate sin; it is dreadful; but you should never speak falsely to sinners, for that does not teach them to repent.  Mind you never lie again.  Look at me.  I am chained, and I have no repentance in me.  See me.  I am nearer it...the other—­sin, I mean.  If that man comes...will he?”

“No—­no!” Rhoda cried.

“If that man comes—­”

“He will not come!”

“He cast me off at the church door, and said he had been cheated.  Money!  Oh, Edward!”

Dahlia drooped her head.

“He will keep away.  You are safe,” said Rhoda.

“Because, if no help comes, I am lost—­I am lost for ever!”

“But help will come.  I mean peace will come.  We will read; we will work in the garden.  You have lifted poor father up, my dear.”

“Ah! that old man!” Dahlia sighed.

“He is our father.”

“Yes, poor old man!” and Dahlia whispered:  “I have no pity for him.  If I am dragged away, I’m afraid I shall curse him.  He seems a stony old man.  I don’t understand fathers.  He would make me go away.  He talks the Scriptures when he is excited.  I’m afraid he would shut my Bible for me.  Those old men know nothing of the hearts of women.  Now, darling, go to your room.”