“Why should I work and suffer any longer for myself alone?” she thought; “why wear out my life struggling for the bread I have no heart to eat?  I am not wise enough to find my place, nor patient enough to wait until it comes to me.  Better give up trying, and leave room for those who have something to live for.”

Many a stronger soul has known a dark hour when the importunate wish has risen that it were possible and right to lay down the burdens that oppress, the perplexities that harass, and hasten the coming of the long sleep that needs no lullaby.  Such an hour was this to Christie, for, as she stood there, that sorrowful bewilderment which we call despair came over her, and ruled her with a power she could not resist.

A flight of steps close by led to a lumber wharf, and, scarcely knowing why, she went down there, with a vague desire to sit still somewhere, and think her way out of the mist that seemed to obscure her mind.  A single tall lamp shone at the farther end of the platform, and presently she found herself leaning her hot forehead against the iron pillar, while she watched with curious interest the black water rolling sluggishly below.

She knew it was no place for her, yet no one waited for her, no one would care if she staid for ever, and, yielding to the perilous fascination that drew her there, she lingered with a heavy throbbing in her temples, and a troop of wild fancies whirling through her brain.  Something white swept by below,—­only a broken oar—­but she began to wonder how a human body would look floating through the night.  It was an awesome fancy, but it took possession of her, and, as it grew, her eyes dilated, her breath came fast, and her lips fell apart, for she seemed to see the phantom she had conjured up, and it wore the likeness of herself.

With an ominous chill creeping through her blood, and a growing tumult in her mind, she thought, “I must go,” but still stood motionless, leaning over the wide gulf, eager to see where that dead thing would pass away.  So plainly did she see it, so peaceful was the white face, so full of rest the folded hands, so strangely like, and yet unlike, herself, that she seemed to lose her identity, and wondered which was the real and which the imaginary Christie.  Lower and lower she bent; looser and looser grew her hold upon the pillar; faster and faster beat the pulses in her temples, and the rush of some blind impulse was swiftly coming on, when a hand seized and caught her back.

For an instant every thing grew black before her eyes, and the earth seemed to slip away from underneath her feet.  Then she was herself again, and found that she was sitting on a pile of lumber, with her head uncovered, and a woman’s arm about her.

The rescue.

“Was I going to drown myself?” she asked, slowly, with a fancy that she had been dreaming frightfully, and some one had wakened her.

“You were most gone; but I came in time, thank God!  O Christie! don’t you know me?”