It was not I. Fate spoke through my lips words that I
hated. And he — he must have known it ! He can't be so
blind ! He must have known how I loved him. I can't
endure the thought that he went away with the feeling that
/was cruel. And yet it had to be so. Something is cruel,
to play such games with human hearts ! "

Then she would sit, and go over all that long year. She
felt again the sensation of guilty, glad surprise at having
heard those words spoken to her supposed unconsciousness
after her fall. Again she looked up with pride, as he spoke
his brave, manly words from the pulpit; and she remem-
bered how she felt they were her words, for he was hers.
She lived over once more the afternoon in which he had
read his verses; and she recalled how, while she shrunk
from having him avow himself just then, still she had exulted
in seeing his heart at her feet. Her whole life now seemed
divided only into two parts. She had not lived at all till she



222 BLUFFTON.
met him. Then there had been one bright year; and all
since then was a wilderness.
She knelt down to pray, as she had always done since her
unconscious childhood at her mother's knee.
