might not develop her regard towards one or the other of them into a far deeper feeling.  In their absence, their manly qualities appealed to her imagination.  She had reached a stage in spiritual development where her woman’s nature was ready for its supreme requirement.  She could be more than friend, and was conscious of the truth; and she believed that her heart would make a positive and final choice in accord with her intense and loyal sympathies.  In the great drama of the war centred all that ideal and knightly action that has ever been so fascinating to her sex, and daily conversation with her father had enabled her to understand what lofty principles and great destinies were involved.  She had been shown how President Lincoln’s proclamation, freeing the slaves, had aimed a fatal blow at the chief enemies of liberty, not only in this land, but in all lands.  Mr. Vosburgh was a philosophical student of history, and, now that she had become his companion, he made it clear to her how the present was linked to the past.  Instead of being imbued with vindictiveness towards the South, she was made to see a brave, self-sacrificing, but misled people, seeking to rivet their own chains and blight the future of their fair land.  Therefore, a man like Lane, capable of appreciating and acting upon these truths, took heroic proportions in her fancy, while Strahan, almost as delicate as a girl, yet brave as the best, won, in his straightforward simplicity, her deepest sympathy.  The fact that the latter was near, that his heart had turned to her even from under the shadow of death, gave him an ascendency for the time.

“To some such man I shall eventually yield,” she assured herself, “and not to one who brings a chill of doubt, not to one unmastered by loyal impulses to face every danger which our enemies dare meet.”

Then she slept, and dreamt that she saw Strahan reaching out his hands to her for help from dark, unknown depths.

She awoke sobbing, and, under the confused impulse of the moment, exclaimed:  “He shall have all the help I can give; he shall live.  While he is weaker, he is braver than Mr. Lane.  He triumphed over himself and everything.  He most needs me.  Mr. Lane is strong in himself.  Why should I be raising such lofty standards of self-sacrifice when I cannot give love to one who most needs it, most deserves it?”

CHAPTER XXIII.

“My friendship is mine to give.”

Strahan’s convalescence need not be dwelt upon, nor the subtle aid given by Marian through flowers, fruit, and occasional calls upon his mother.