A VICTORIOUS 
 DEFEAT
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 VICTORIOUS DEFEAT 
 
 Hoinonce 
 
 BY WOLCOTT BALESTIER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1886
 
 Copyright, 1885, by WOLCOTT BALESTIER. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "'One of our ordinances forbids the marriage of a members 
 
 of the society with a stranger; another, clandestine be- 1 Frontispiece 
 trolkals"' j 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " ' Conrad, you mean more /' " faces 92 
 
 "For a motnent she stood quite still, in sad musing' 1 '' ... " 114 
 " March -waited a weary time" " 136 
 
 " Mr, Keator stood, with his head bared, gazing at a cloud of 
 
 dust" " 158 
 
 " Kneeling before his chair, the harassed minister prayed fer 
 vently for strength' 1 '' " 242 
 
 " The old watchman faced slowly by them, crying, as he bade 
 them a merry Christmas: 'Hear, brethren, hear! The 
 hour of nine is come ! Keep pure each heart, and chasten 
 every home!' 1 '''' " 252 
 
 " The minister crouched forward, alone with his conscience 
 
 and his God " " 336 
 
 2062167
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN the uncertain glory of a failing April day, Owen 
 March stood before a door in the village of Judea, and 
 let fall its knocker. His imagination, which went for 
 ward with a vague interest, as he rapped, to meet those 
 with whom the opening of the door would make him 
 acquainted, stood still with a mild shock when no foot 
 steps answered his summons. But he lifted the reclin 
 ing lamb again quite patiently, and waited once more 
 for a response. As it did not come, he let his eyes wan 
 der down the street up which he had just come. It 
 was a thoroughfare full of entertainment for one who 
 saw it for the first time. March regarded it attentively 
 for some minutes, during which he once more caused 
 the little brass figure to make gentle inquiry of the 
 dilatoriness of the house's inmates. When this knock 
 also proved fruitless, he turned his glance toward the 
 garden, endeavoring to bask beneath him in the stingy 
 sunlight. As he looked, he was aware that the solitude 
 was abruptly peopled. A young girl emerged from an 
 arbor which he could see among the bare shrubs sur-
 
 4 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 rounding it in the midst of the enclosure. He had 
 time to observe her as she came, for she often stooped 
 to pluck some early spring flower, and did not perceive 
 him. She was compactly and rather largely framed. 
 Her face, as it showed itself to him, in unconscious re- 
 pose, was possessed by a certain dignity and serious 
 ness, touched with a curious grace. Its lines were 
 strikingly regular; in her fair full checks a faint color 
 showed. The pensive calm that March felt in her ex 
 pression may have been partly the result of her un 
 usual dress, for her hair was entirely concealed beneath 
 a close-fitting white coif, a stainless neckerchief was 
 crossed upon her breast, and she was perfectly simply 
 attired in a gown of bluish gray. This dress, which 
 touches the most indifferent form with a neutral shadow 
 of beauty, illumined this girl with a singular fairness. 
 March at once guessed that it was the Moravian costume, 
 but if the figure moving toward him was, as he sup 
 posed, Dr. Van Cleef's daughter, he was surprised to 
 see her in this attire. He would not have known to 
 what to refer his impression that he should find this 
 young lady, of whom he had heard so much, habited in 
 altogether the worldly way ; probably, however, it had 
 been merely an inference from the ample suggestions 
 which his cousin, Frederick Lincoln, had let fall touch 
 ing her character. March had the sense of tearing up 
 a foolish mental photograph as she came nearer. The 
 original was hopelessly different, but it was not a dis 
 appointing difference. When she bent scarcely a dozen 
 feet from him to pull away the leaves matted upon a 
 bed of crocuses, still not observing him, he experienced 
 a humorous feeling of more absolute neglect than the 
 silence of the house had given him. But in a moment
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 5 
 
 she raised her clear, serene eyes, and encountered his 
 waiting smile. Her color deepened for an inappreciable 
 moment, and she halted suddenly, with the damp leaves 
 in her hand. She was quite tall, but all her motions 
 were graceful. The little gesture with which she held 
 the leaves away from her seemed to him indescribably 
 pretty. 
 
 " My father is visiting a patient at a distance, if you 
 wished to see him," she said, after a moment. " But 
 he will be back soon. I hope you have not been kept 
 waiting long." 
 
 " I've done very well," answered March, glancing 
 down at her where she stood in the garden at a little 
 distance from the high stoop. "It is very good of you 
 to live in so interesting a village, Miss Van Clcef." 
 
 O O " 
 
 She looked up with a fresh light in her sensitive eyes. 
 They seemed to be groping for a clew to the easy con 
 fidence of the young stranger before her. As she 
 glanced at him with keen, quiet regard, a sudden 
 thought appeared to pass through her mind, for she 
 dropped the leaves and moved quickly toward him. 
 
 But March had already said, " You are going to tell 
 me that I have the advantage of you. I don't mean to 
 keep it, however. I am " 
 
 "Pardon me," she interrupted ; "I am very stupid. 
 I think I need not trouble you to tell me. You are 
 She paused. "Are you not ? Perhaps I venture. 
 It may not be " She hesitated again, and seemed to 
 be ploughing up her memories. 
 
 March stood on the porch above, smilingly awaiting 
 her conclusion, and she glanced up at him with inter 
 rogative archness, as she said, " Yet it must be," with a 
 firmness which decided nothing. "No; I'll not vent-
 
 6 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 urc it." She gave a little, laughing sigh, looking in 
 study at the foot with which she corrected a wandering 
 crocus bloom. 
 
 "But you guess rightly." 
 
 " Ah, how can you say ? You might be a dozen dif 
 ferent persons." 
 
 " I don't know," answered March, with enjoyment. 
 " Do you think I am ? " 
 
 " I know a thousand persons who you are not," she 
 urged, with a conscious pleasure in the repartee. 
 
 Was this bright illogic issuing from a young woman 
 arrayed in plain gray and wearing a nun-like cap ? 
 March asked himself. " There are unquestionably 
 billions, if w r e may believe the census," he returned. 
 "The thought overwhelms one with a sense of insig 
 nificance. I hesitate to introduce so small a unit : it 
 seems a little like the presumption of coming forward 
 with a minority report." 
 
 " Pray do, sir !" she said with a sudden withdrawing, 
 born of the saving apprehension that she might indeed 
 be as mistaken as she seemed to fear. 
 
 " Must I abet your doubts ? I am Owen March. 
 Miss Van Cleef, and I am the bearer of a letter to your 
 father." 
 
 "From Lady Amprey ? Then I was right. We are 
 very glad to see you, Mr. March. Your credentials 
 have preceded you. Lady Amprey wrote us, and we 
 have been looking for your coming." She ended with 
 a frank smile and put forth her hand, an amicable 
 token, which March hastened to accept by descending 
 the steps and placing himself beside her. 
 
 " I ought to invite you into the house, I suppose, Mr. 
 March ; but I credit you with a preference for this
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 7 
 
 pleasant air. Perhaps you don't think it pleasant, but 
 it is at least for us. The sun is not a perfectly amiable 
 body with us, but it has its humane impulses, and this 
 is the result of one of them." 
 
 She spoke of the chagrin which her father would 
 feel that he should be absent at the time of his arrival, 
 and then, as they strolled into one of the errant and 
 unrelated paths, " Lady Amprey seemed very sweet," 
 she exclaimed, " when she came to visit us in New 
 York. I was quite young, and she was different yes. 
 But she had real charm, I am sure. She was very 
 gentle, and courteous and fine," she mused, with a sigh, 
 which was not envious, but which March thought might 
 be called emulative. 
 
 "Lady Amprey is extremely agreeable," he said, 
 aloud. " I trust you will not think her less so when 
 you find to what she has exposed you." 
 
 " Yourself ? " inquired Constance, with a mysterious 
 smile. " Ah, we shall see ! " 
 
 March's amiable opinion of Lady Amprey was of old 
 standing. It was not due to the shooting which she 
 had been able to offer him when he spent his Eton and 
 his Oxford vacations with her ; but the shooting was 
 very good. His regard for her was entirely the prod 
 uct of her own admirable qualities. She was a widow 
 and she was forty; but she had the vivacity of youth. 
 Her attitude toward him was that of a sprightly young 
 aunt. She was in fact a cousin of high attenuation to 
 some people who were cousins of his. Her relation 
 ship with Dr. Van Cleef was upon the other side, and 
 did not connect him with March in the remotest de 
 gree. But when she found that he was going to 
 America, and especially that he was likely to visit Dr.
 
 8 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Van Clcef upon some particularly disagreeable busi 
 ness, she made haste to give him a letter to her rela 
 tive. March had left England rather suddenly, or he 
 would have bidden farewell to Lady Amprey in per 
 son. As it was he had written her upon the eve of his 
 departure, telling her that lie had been asked to go out 
 to explore the promising colonies recently forfeited by 
 His Majesty for a certain company of young men of 
 his acquaintance who had been led to think of immi 
 grating to them. They were very good fellows, with 
 very small fortunes he said, and he intimated that he 
 might join them if he found the prospect favorable. 
 Lady Amprey was not surprised. Those who reasoned 
 only from a knowledge of Owen March's position were 
 amazed ; but Lady Amprey had known him, since his 
 father, Sir John, had sent him as a boy from one of the 
 West Indies, of which he was Governor, to Eton ; and 
 she had perceived long ago that his aims and theories 
 were as far as possible from those common at the time 
 to the second sons of baronets. She was aware that he 
 kept a particularly warm place in his heart for Amer 
 ica, and she had admonished Sir John early in her ac 
 quaintance with his son that he would some day make 
 an American of himself. She added that it was rea 
 sonable to expect something of the sort, for one's 
 mother was not a native of the colonies for nothing. 
 This mild pleasantry was intended for Sir John, who 
 in marrying an American girl with whom he became 
 acquainted in one of his numerous voyages to the 
 United States, had done an undeniably peculiar thing. 
 It was a very successful and charming marriage, as 
 was admitted on all sides when the county families, on 
 the return of the pair to England, called upon the high-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 9 
 
 bred woman whom Sir John had made his wife, and 
 saw the two together ; but this was easily accounted 
 for when it was remembered that in fact her father had 
 been born in England, and of an irreproachable family. 
 She was apparently American enough, however, to be 
 stow upon her son some strikingly un-English tenden 
 cies, and these had exhibited themselves so clearly to 
 Lucy Amprey, while he was still in his teens, that she 
 was prepared for almost anything which he might do. 
 This plan of colonization was quite in the direction of 
 her previsions, and by so much grateful to her pro 
 phetic soul. But the satisfaction of being able to say, 
 " I told you so," which at its best Avas adulterated with 
 regret for his departure, was almost entirely alloy when 
 she came to the postscript of his letter. " I have been 
 offered," he wrote, " at the last moment, quite without 
 warning, the position of correspondent of the Republic 
 in America. It is, you know, the single newspaper 
 champion of the United States on this side, and you 
 can understand that I shall be glad to say my say in it. 
 Over here we don't understand the people who have 
 grown away from us across the water. I say we, hop 
 ing that my fancies about them may be sufficiently 
 justified when I reach there to say You ; but I am at 
 least anxious to comprehend and know them which 
 comes nearer explaining the Republic's choice of me 
 than anything else perhaps. But it doesn't explain it. 
 I have a suspicion that you are unconsciously the ex 
 planation. You know how you have been accustomed 
 to repeat my mutterings against the corn-laws, and 
 some other things which are making our dear England 
 an undesirable place of residence, as a kind of joke. 
 Perhaps the editor of the Republic has taken them seri-
 
 io A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 ously ; though it is hard to fancy how a man whom the 
 Government prefers should usually read his seditious 
 journal behind prison bars can be in the way of hear 
 ing Lady Amprey's gossip. 
 
 " I imagine that, in fact, he fixed upon me in despera 
 tion, because he could not at the moment get out of his 
 prison to find any one else. The position is at present 
 held by a doctor in Judea, a Moravian settlement in 
 Pennsylvania Dr. Van Cleef a young man, I suppose, 
 who finds that a growing practice leaves little time for 
 musing on paper. Well, / shall have time ; for, after 
 leaving New York, where my mother's people are, I 
 shan't know a soul in the country, and, with the best 
 intentions, I can hardly do much exploring for my in 
 tending colonists in the long evenings. Somehow I 
 fancy the evenings will be very long over there." 
 
 Lady Amprey's feelings upon perusing this would not 
 have been guessed by a reader of the letter of introduc 
 tion to her kinsman which she immediately wrote and 
 dispatched to March. She was entirely silent as to the 
 position and the appointment, devoting herself consci 
 entiously to the praise of March. But her sentiments 
 were made plain in the enclosure to the young man 
 himself. 
 
 "It is very nice of them to appoint you," she wrote, 
 after a very sparing use of her right to impute to her 
 self the art of divination, upon his fulfilment of her 
 prophecy, " but your young doctor chances to be a 
 man of nearly seventy, and my cousin. Since it must 
 be some one, it may altogether best be you, but I could 
 w r ish you were to displace a younger and less charming 
 man. You will say that I am prejudiced by kinship. 
 But Dr. Van Cleef is at least my tenth cousin, if there is
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. n 
 
 such a thing ; and, if it were true, you ought to be the 
 last man to complain of my sense of the ties of consan 
 guinity. He is such a fine old gentleman as I fancy 
 you will scarcely believe they make across the water ; 
 and he has an interesting daughter. Be careful that 
 you don't fall in love with her. It's true I saw her 
 several years ago, and there is no telling what she may 
 have blossomed into. But it can't be anything disa 
 greeable. I've seldom met any one who seemed to 
 understand herself better. She knows precisely whither 
 she is going. Pray see to it that you do ! 
 
 " I repeat, they are charming people for Americans, 
 extraordinarily so. My distant cousinship the mother's 
 branch, of course was a license to perfect openness, 
 and in the course of my visit, which I assure you \vas 
 not brief, I should have discovered any ugly little 
 angles, if they had any. But they haven't. 
 
 "Adieu, my dear boy ; I envy you the prospect of see 
 ing people without angles. So many on my calling list 
 are constantly tempting me to murmur, ' The square of 
 the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is equal to the 
 ium of the squares of the other two sides.' Is that it ? 
 "Sincerely, LUCY AMPREY." 
 
 Lady Amprey's light-hearted plaint reached March 
 just before he set sail, and there was no time to assure her 
 that of course he should not displace her kinsman. 
 There was not even so much time as would have ena 
 bled him to inform the Republic of his determination. 
 But when, six weeks later, he reached New York, he 
 put both Lady Amprey and the imprisoned editor of 
 the Republic into possession of his intentions. The voy 
 age, whose leisure had given opportunity for a great
 
 12 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 deal of reflection, had left him with many hours which 
 he could only devote to a most active regret for the 
 impulse which had led him to accept a post which was 
 unquestionably very dear to an old man. He read this 
 between the lines of Lady Amprey's letter, and his only 
 wish was that he had read it between the lines of the 
 proposal of the Republic's editor. 
 
 He was quite conscious that he \vas surrendering an 
 opportunity one which meant more perhaps to a 
 young man of his aims and ideas than it would have 
 meant to almost any one else but to give it up was 
 immensely less costly than to keep it. It was not at all 
 a matter of philanthropy, or of sentimental kindness ; 
 nor had it anything in common with the unlicensed ben 
 evolence which is generous a great many times a week 
 for the sake of seeing itself in the act. He simply 
 could not do it ; and having yielded his chance he spent 
 no mourning upon it. March had long ago investigated 
 himself, had taken account of life, and the outlook had 
 instructed him that the reasonable thing was to be happy. 
 
 He had many letters to write on his arrival in New 
 York besides those already named. In his capacity of 
 spyer-out of this land of promise, he w r as, of course, 
 obliged to render an early account of his impressions 
 of its chief city ; and outside the little company whose 
 agent he was, several of his friends (sons of noblemen 
 in all degrees after the first), who entertained a curi 
 osity about America, had asked him to send them his 
 earliest ideas regarding it, as if they were commission 
 ing him to dispatch a buffalo robe by return packet. 
 The only letter which he wrote for his own satisfaction 
 was to his father. To him March felt that he owed an 
 especial debt, beyond that larger obligation which he
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 13 
 
 had always eagerly recognized, for the extreme reason 
 ableness of his attitude upon the question of this 
 American tour. He was sensible that his republican 
 theories, however mild they might appear to himself, 
 who had the advantage of knowing how much more 
 radical they once had been, must seem to plough dan 
 gerously deep to his dear father's delightfully confident 
 Toryism. He felt that an English baronet may fairly 
 have his feelings upon his second son's announcement 
 of his belief that the United States exemplifies the most 
 excellent form of government in the world ; and he was 
 sincerely obliged to him that he had not attempted to 
 pare his squareness down to roundness, or in any other 
 way, except, as Sir John said, " by giving him his head," 
 to change his tendencies. March knew that his private 
 word to himself had been that if one's son could not do 
 as one desired, it was the next lower point of felicity to 
 Avish what one's son desired, and this was so admirably 
 fair and generous that March had several times almost 
 resolved to give up the voyage and his plans as a 
 sacrifice to such moderation. But it had ended in his 
 going ; and he was now writing his father some of the 
 things which he had found difficult to say, in praise of 
 his kindness. 
 
 His departure had indeed caused both his father and 
 mother real distress, not so much from dislike of the 
 journey itself, as from dread of its consequences. If it 
 should result in his permanent residence in the 
 country his mother's stout patriotism gave her no com 
 fort in the prospect, and to his father's royal ism it 
 was an inexpressibly painful contingency. It would 
 have been simply shocking to both of them if they had 
 not, as it were, dwelt with the possibility for several
 
 14 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 years before it came so near. March's wishes were 
 obvious enough when he returned from Heidelberg ; 
 but he had not pressed them. He had been content to 
 look about him and measure the world and himself for 
 a time ; for he had become imbued in Germany with 
 a certain disrespect for the opinions of the moment, 
 since he was constantly finding them in his young 
 man's state of flux, discredited by the light which he 
 got from the next. 
 
 His feelings about America had certainly passed 
 through more than one stage within his memory. As a 
 boy, before he left the West Indies where he had been 
 born, he had been much attracted to the country of his 
 mother. The nation then trembling out of its swad 
 dling clothes a few hundred miles from him, was unde^ 
 niably full of interest to the onlooker. That onlooker 
 being a thoughtful and imaginative boy, with an early 
 exhibited taste for the problems of government, it is 
 intelligible that a comparatively faint zephyr should 
 blow the latent Americanism in his blood into an obsti 
 nate blaze. This atmospheric impulse was furnished 
 him in unnecessary vigor, when, after a season spent 
 at Eton, and a longer one at Oxford, he opened his 
 mind to the subtleties of German thinking at Heidel 
 berg. It was, to speak accurately, not a direct impulse 
 Avhich was imparted to him ; there were certain limit 
 ations touching the inculcation of republicanism in 
 German universities at this time. But the tone of 
 the place was distinctly liberal ; a breeze of truth 
 seemed always to be blowing through its halls, expel 
 ling cobwebs and rending fallacies ; and the doors of 
 one's intelligence must have been barred with much 
 care to have avoided the message.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 15 
 
 March, whose openness was as the openness of the 
 honeycomb, found himself peculiarly susceptible to the 
 influence of this missionary and informing breeze. The 
 study of Political Science, then struggling toward its 
 own, gave the special impetus which was lacking to his 
 feelings, and made him presently a brilliantly red repub 
 lican. In the further time that he spent at Heidelberg 
 his ideas were naturally modified by much the same san 
 ative power which had equipped him with his theories, 
 and he returned to England and took up his residence 
 with his father, who had laid aside the glories of the 
 gubernatorial function, a very hearty republican, in 
 deed, but one of a much less inflamed type than he had 
 once liked to believe himself. 
 
 This pale form of faith, however, took on, it may be 
 believed, a sufficiently high color, to his father's alarm, 
 and during the three years that intervened between his 
 return to England and his departure from it, his opin 
 ions gave the baronet considerable anxiety. He held, 
 in the ceurse of this time, many memorable conversa 
 tions with his son. Owen pretended no more rever 
 ence than he felt for the laws and institutions of his 
 country, which made possible the general distress, and 
 the threatening bubblings of that political pot which at 
 the time came so near boiling over. But he tried to 
 treat his father's prejudices tenderly, and always en 
 deavored to put his revolutionary sentiments as gently 
 as possible. 
 
 "Ah, father! " cried he, as they came into the house 
 one day after one of the walks during which these col 
 loquies usually went on, "you don't know what a mild 
 radical I am. Pray, don't think me a Reign of Terror 
 man, and that sort of thing. I've not the ghost of a
 
 1 6 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 wish to subvert society; I find it much too charming 
 an institution. And in a general division of property, 
 I don't see how I should come out any better off. 
 There arc worse things, perhaps, than being the young 
 er son of a gentleman who has the fortune to own such 
 a park as that" he indicated the beautiful expanse of 
 turf before them as they paused on the steps " cer 
 tainly when that gentleman has the uncommon goodness 
 to be Sir John March. What do you think, father ? " 
 laughed the young republican, as he took the old man 
 by both his shoulders, and forced him to give back his 
 smile. The father's glance dwelt admiringly on his son's 
 stahvart form. 
 
 " I think you arc a much better son than royalist, 
 my dear boy." 
 
 Once, when March had been speaking of the unwis 
 dom of a form of government " under which the poor 
 are without a vote, and in the best circumstances can 
 hardly own the soil, which they improve for others from 
 year to year," Sir John rejoined: "There is something 
 in what you say. I have often thought that matters 
 might be improved. But I don't go quite so far. I 
 don't know whether one of the results of your obser 
 vation may have been that I am myself one of the 
 'others,' as you call them. What if I say that I weakly 
 prefer to be one of them ? " 
 
 " I should say that I trust you will not live to see 
 anything that you would not like, dear father ! " 
 
 It has been said that Lady March, as well as her hus 
 band, had in a manner lived for some time with the pos 
 sibility of exactly the event which had now occurred ; 
 but she had, of course, held no such talks as Sir John 
 with Owen, and when her son's intention was first an-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 17 
 
 nounced to her, the philosophy with which she had 
 tried to fortify herself in advance resolved itself simply 
 into tears. She wondered why she had not long ago 
 perceived how certain it was ; but it was, perhaps, best 
 that she had not known, for surely only those malevo 
 lent spirits who hope one day to rule the world by some 
 such code as prevails in Old Ladies' Homes can wish 
 to make a mother's ideas of her son include the. ob 
 vious. 
 
 When Lady March had conquered the bit of weak 
 ness with which she had met the first intelligence of 
 her son's deplorable plan, she accepted it with a kind 
 of equanimity. After all, she told herself, she was glad 
 to have Owen visit her native land, if it did not end in 
 his remaining there ; and she was soon going about 
 with a fair counterfeit of cheerfulness, and setting her 
 self to smooth her son's path among her countrymen, as 
 far as letters of introduction, and the like kindly docu 
 ments, could accomplish that end. 
 
 To March, the most fruitful of these amiable papers 
 was that which made him known to his cousin, Fred 
 erick Lincoln, and his agreeable mother, Lady March's 
 sister. They lived in one of the most perfect products 
 of the colonial idea in architecture which March found 
 in New York. The house was generously made, and 
 full of a dignity and simplicity of its own. Through 
 its long windows it looked upon the Battery and the 
 beautiful prospect beyond, and in the autumn days 
 March often sat upon the balcony, with his aunt and 
 her daughters for Lincoln had several sisters and 
 watched the concourse of courtly men beneath them, 
 who, having accomplished the deliberate business of 
 the day in Wall and South, in Pine and Cedar Streets,
 
 i8 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 and Maiden Lane, joined their wives and daughters in 
 walking in the green park. The movement up town 
 had begun, and had carried fashion as far as Park 
 Place ; but Mrs. Schuyler Lincoln was one of the in 
 heritors of the sagacious tradition that a house facing 
 the Batter)', the still uncheapened bay, and the noble 
 outlook beyond, was the great privilege. 
 
 The two young men had met as boys on the island, 
 under the mild rule of March's father ; and Lincoln 
 pretended to remember March as an uncommonly dis 
 agreeable child. This fortunately did not prevent him 
 from being very agreeable to his cousin, and March in 
 a short time said to himself that his cousin was an al 
 together charming companion. As he knew every 
 one, he was acquainted, March presently found, with 
 the Van Cleefs, and was surprised to know that his 
 cousin had a like pleasure in prospect. 
 
 "I used to know them," he said, "extremely well. 
 That was during Mrs. Van Cleefs life-time, of course, 
 After that they moved to what's the name of the place 
 Jerusalem Jericho ?" 
 
 " Judea ?" asked March. 
 
 "Judea; and Dr. Van Cleef is practising his pro 
 fession there. He was never thoroughly happy here, I 
 often fancied. He was a kind of apostate, I believe. 
 The epithet sounds harsh, doesn't it ? but it means very 
 little. He was a Moravian, who wanted a broader field ; 
 he always seemed attached to his profession, at all 
 events, and I suppose he felt he might accomplish more 
 for others and himself outside the society village. Of 
 course, that was scarcely consistent with full member 
 ship in their organization, so he simply separated from 
 them and came here. He was our best physician, my
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 19 
 
 mother says ; she wept at his departure. For my part, 
 it did not increase my personal happiness. I had a 
 great liking for him. He had a curious daughter, who 
 used to interest me. She was very young when she 
 left New York, and I've often wondered how she 
 turned out. I never knew a more individual girl. 
 She was not so pretty ; that was not her distinction: 
 but you felt her presence when she was a mere child. 
 She bore herself uncommonly well ; and she had such 
 aspirations. Poor little girl ! They reached to the 
 clouds. I used to be afraid for the time that should 
 shatter them. I wonder where they are now perhaps 
 still climbing. You ought to know her. Excuse me, I 
 forget, you will. I congratulate you, then. She was a 
 little princess at seventeen. Fancy what she must be 
 now." 
 
 "A queen, probably." 
 
 " It's not so impossible. I should like very well to 
 know ; I wish I were going with you to Judea," said 
 the young man, musingly. 
 
 " I wish you were," exclaimed March, heartily. 
 
 Lincoln did not go with him to Judea, but he ar 
 ranged to meet him there if the time of his visit should 
 coincide with hip yearly vacation a thing of highly 
 variable occurrence and the most elastic duration. One 
 chance and another pushed Judea toward the bottom 
 of March's list, and it was spring before he reached it. 
 Meanwhile, he had seen the United States as thoroughly 
 as was then possible, and with eager and increasing 
 interest, which he successfully communicated to his 
 transatlantic audience. It vindicated and outran all 
 his visions. It was a chrysalis from which almost any 
 butterfly might be expected ; and when he had at last
 
 20 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 surveyed it all, and was ready to make his journey to 
 Judea, he felt himself justified in asserting, with some 
 positivencss, to those who waited for his final word 
 across the water, that the process of assisting to strip 
 the golden cocoon was likely to prove a profitable one. 
 To Judea he went with a certain curiosity and interest, 
 roused by the engaging pictures of Lady Amprey and 
 Lincoln. He went, also, with something infinitely more 
 valuable ; for the assurance of the editor of the Republic, 
 that Dr. Van Cleef should not be disturbed in his 
 position, gave him a freer conscience.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THIS young Englishman, walking by Constance's side 
 through Dr. Van Cleef s garden, would certainly have 
 struck a Moravian spectator, if there had chanced to be 
 one, as a supremely unusual figure, for many reasons. 
 But he would have engaged the attention of an onlooker 
 with no such traditions and prejudices as a Moravian's, 
 for his height, which was unusual, and his strong well- 
 knit frame, gave him, taken in connection with his ad 
 mirable bearing, an uncommonly positive presence. 
 His eyes were the index of a sincere spirit, but they 
 were perhaps not notable in any other way, unless it is 
 worth while to add that a subtle and often rather irrel 
 evant humorous twinkle had its home in them. His 
 brown hair hung loosely about his head. Doubtless his 
 face was not handsome ; but it did not seem improbable 
 that certain persons might so describe it. It was, at 
 least, distinctly earnest, and its firm lines were drawn 
 with delicacy and security. It was a strikingly genuine 
 face. 
 
 March's dress was not modish ; it did not insist. But 
 he was very well dressed indeed. This felicitous point 
 may have been of less easy maintenance, in those days 
 of the gradual disappearance of ruffles and knee-breeches, 
 than it is found in this year of grace ; at all events, its 
 effect in the case of Owen March was a kind of dis 
 tinction.
 
 22 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 The garden to which Constance was introducing 
 him, struck him as extraordinary. It was a garden of 
 gardens. Its extent, the variety of its exhibition, and 
 the care with which its achievements were nurtured and 
 classified, seemed almost professional. Something of 
 this he communicated to his companion. " Certainly," 
 said she; " it is my father's passion. He seeks out new 
 species, and cares for the old, with the enthusiasm which 
 other men spend upon books, and violins, and butterflies, 
 and what not." 
 
 " It's a pretty enthusiasm." 
 
 " Is it not ? One is very dull, don't you think, to whom 
 flowers say nothing ? But there is very little now. You 
 should see it in summer. I hope your business in Amer 
 ica is not important. Father will want to keep you un 
 til he can show it you." 
 
 They walked on through the walks, thickly bordered 
 with hedges of mock-orange, which had less stiffness 
 than they w r ear in gardens whose beds are laid out by 
 triangulation. They came upon a German who was en 
 gaged in loosing the earth from a great number of pots, 
 and planting the green shoots which the damp clay em 
 braced in a fallow space prepared for them. With this 
 man Miss Van Cleef paused, to decide a horticultural 
 problem which appeared of immediate importance. 
 As they went on, " You are at least the daughter of 
 an enthusiast," commented March. " One might al 
 most say you had some of the original passion." 
 
 " Yes, I am fond of it all," admitted Constance/' and 
 one must do something. You may have observed that 
 we are not richly supplied with means of entertain 
 ment," she went on a trifle bitterly. " One cannot al 
 ways read and spin, and sew, and yes the garden is
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 23 
 
 a great resource. I scarcely know what I should do 
 without it." 
 
 The paths which were endless, reminded March in 
 their frequent doublings and windings of a labyrinth ; 
 and it occurred to him, that accompanied by such a 
 companion, that ancient form of puzzle was by no means 
 without its excellent qualities. A series of shrubs re 
 placed the graceful hedge as they came into the more 
 secluded regions of the garden, and before a rather odd 
 bush among these March presently paused. " This is 
 not an American shrub ? " 
 
 " I think not," said Constance. " Look at the little 
 label in the ground there. There are a great many 
 foreigners ; father has an especial fondness for them." 
 
 " It is a Hollander," said he, bending to read the 
 neatly inscribed Latin on the finger-length of pine that 
 stood sentinel before the shrub. " I thought I remem 
 bered it. It's very pretty when it blossoms, and I at 
 tach a little romance to it. It grows in the meadows, 
 near the dikes, I think. The romance is not mine ; it 
 belonged with the shrub to a young Dutch student, 
 whom I knew at Heidelberg. His betrothed was a trim 
 little Hollander, who lived with her mother, in a wretched 
 sort of way, up in some unspeakably lofty rooms at the 
 Hague. She loved the shrub with the small remnant 
 of heart that was not given to Hans and her mother 
 she had some special sentiment about it ; it was their 
 only flower, a memory of the country abundance they 
 had left, and that sort of thing and when she died 
 it was very sad ; she had gone with her mother, a few 
 stations out, with their pitiful earnings to meet Hans, 
 who was coming home to marry her. Only her mother 
 and a few others were saved. When she died, Hans
 
 24 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 claimed the shrub, and took it back to his rooms at 
 Heidelberg, and watched it with a dogged loyalty and 
 a grim, hard sort of despair, that haunts me yet. He 
 went himself, after a while, poor fellow, and one of his 
 friends planted the shrub above him, and nursed it a 
 little from time to time. It throve wonderfully, and 
 bore every year the most perfect scarlet blossom. His 
 friend had a sentiment about it, and left a bit of endow 
 ment with the authorities to preserve it always, I be 
 lieve. I don't know but it's living yet." 
 
 " How good of you, Mr. March ! " 
 
 " I didn't say it was I," asserted he, looking up from 
 the gravel which he had been studying. 
 
 "Ah, but you can't deny it," she returned, smiling 
 through a suspicious film. 
 
 A firm, slow step made itself heard approaching on 
 the path behind them, and both turned. A gentleman 
 whose white locks were shaded by a gray hat, with a 
 far-reaching brim, and who carried a heavy cane, was 
 advancing toward them. 
 
 "Father," said Constance, going to him as he came 
 near, and taking his hand, "this is Mr. March." 
 
 "Indeed! You are very welcome, sir," said the 
 elder gentleman, bowing in the manner of an earlier 
 day, and grasping his hand. " You have come far to see 
 us, and I am grieved that I should have chanced to be 
 away at the time of your arrival. But my daughter 
 she has made you welcome, I trust. Yes, yes," he said, 
 stroking her hand, as she stood rather proudly, March 
 fancied, beside him. "Yes, Constance is a capital sub 
 stitute ; yes, a very good substitute," and he drew her 
 to him absently and kissed her forehead. "Lady 
 Amprey, sir is she quite well ? and your father, Sir
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 25 
 
 John ? I fancy I remember seeing him once, long 
 ago yes thirty years since now, sir." He regarded 
 March meditatively, as he stroked his close-shaven 
 face. " You are one of the Marchs of Devonshire ? 
 Yes, yes, so I thought, so I thought." He sat down 
 suddenly on a bench near. His daughter was beside 
 him instantly. "You are not well, father ! " 
 
 "Yes, my dear, perfectly, perfectly." He smiled upon 
 her, however, with weary eyes. "A little fatigued, that 
 is all." 
 
 " You have driven too far," exclaimed she compas 
 sionately, "you must not do it. You should let Dr. 
 Click take these outside cases." She had drawn from 
 his pocket his handkerchief, and kneeling by his side, 
 was touching his heated forehead with it as she spoke. 
 "How did you find Christina's baby?" 
 
 "John was unduly alarmed. It was a very mild attack." 
 
 "And he let you drive twenty miles for nothing? 
 Ah, poor father ! It was shameful ! " 
 
 March was standing near, drawing his gloves thought 
 fully through his hands. 
 
 "We country physicians have our trials, sir," said Dr. 
 Van Cleef addressing him, "yes, yes, w r e have our 
 trials." He seemed to muse for a moment. " Come 
 Constance, dear," he exclaimed rising deliberately and 
 throwing back his head as if to cast off his fatigue, "it 
 is supper time. Go in and say to Barbara that we will 
 sup in the arbor to-night ; and let your aunt know. It 
 will be warm enough I think, dear." 
 
 It had been one of those gentle days which occasion 
 ally brighten the sullen Northern spring, and the sun 
 was bidding the earth good-night with a suavity which 
 it had not used since the last October.
 
 26 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Constance left them, and the doctor motioned the 
 young man to a seat on the bench, and he sat down be 
 side him. Each of his companion's expressions, and 
 the smiles with which he emphasized them, seemed to 
 March to repeat, " You are very welcome, sir ; " and as 
 they talked, and March watched the figure in gray 
 vanishing up the path, and took upon his face the warm 
 light of the setting sun playing through the hedge and 
 budding trees and shrubs, he felt that there were sev 
 eral facts upon which he might fairly congratulate him 
 self. 
 
 Constance came out to the table, which a maid ser 
 vant was setting in the arbor, with a tall, slight lady of a 
 certain age, dressed in the garb of the society, who was 
 presently made known to March as Miss Cynthia Van 
 Cleef, the doctor's sister. 
 
 "We are glad to see you, sir," she said precisely as 
 they were introduced, and giving his hand a single 
 sharp, downward, impulse, quickly released it, and 
 folded her own shrivelled palms about her slim waist. 
 During the meal which followed she remained quite 
 silent, except to give occasional laconic orders to the 
 young waitress, who seemed to stand in awe of her. 
 Constance took her place at the head of the table, but 
 it was clear that Miss Cynthia directed the domestic 
 government. 
 
 " You have seen my garden, sir, at least, in part ? " 
 said March's entertainer amiably, as they sat drinking 
 their tea in the warm, fading light, "Yes, Constance, I 
 think, is fond of it herself ; she is not unwilling to show 
 it." 
 
 The sun bent its last soft rays upon the four persons 
 gathered about the homely table, and stamped their long
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 27 
 
 shadows on the beaten earth floor, and beyond through 
 the lattice work on the rich brown soil of a newly up 
 turned flower bed. The hedge of silver behind which 
 Constance sat scintillated in the mellow light, and the 
 glassware grew pink under it. Miss Cynthia, who faced 
 the sun, sat defending her weak blinking little eyes 
 from its level glory with one thin hand, which was it 
 self transparently pink in the light. 
 
 From where they sat they could see most of the vil 
 lage street. The house to which this garden was at 
 tached, bore a certain family resemblance to the others, 
 but it was easily the handsomest in sight. Four tall 
 chimneys sought the air above it like exclamation 
 points, and an equal number of buttresses rose mas 
 sively to its stone flanks as if to emphasize the honest 
 firmness and squareness with which the building faced 
 the observer, in a street of which it was not the only 
 notable object. The houses were at a considerable 
 distance apart, and in the vacant stillness that falls 
 upon most villages at the cessation of labor, in the 
 next hours before nightfall, each seemed standing in 
 a separate silence. The occasional sound of footsteps 
 on the hard-beaten earth walks scarcely disturbed the 
 slumberous quiet. Two noble lines of maples threw 
 out their branches over the roadway, and nodded their 
 vagrant shoots with the hinted foliage of early spring 
 to the many-paned windows. The larger limbs drooped 
 in sturdy curves upon the roofs which were by no 
 means the least striking thing in the street. Those 
 which reached the eaves by an uninterrupted sweep 
 turned up their noses at this point, with a saucy 
 flounce, and were transfixed in perpetual retrousse ; 
 others more decorously surrendered to the dwelling's
 
 28 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 front a portion of their forms, which straightway be 
 came concave and were dotted with windows. The 
 least fantastic mode in house-tops seemed to be that 
 angular structure, with the appearance of a carpenter's 
 rule at odds with itself, known as the "gambrel." 
 From all the dormer window gleamed, propped at an 
 guishing inclines, and upon occasion lying prone along 
 the bhingles, like a basking alligator. Most of the 
 buildings were of stone, though occasionally one was 
 simply framed of hewn logs. With inscrutable par 
 simony, in the midst of an ample region of open land, 
 all were placed full upon the street, and beside each 
 door rose a flight of steps, terminated by a little square 
 of flooring. 
 
 " I don't keep the garden for exhibition," said Dr. 
 Van Cleef. " I am glad that any one who cares for 
 flowers should see it ; but its design is a perfectly self 
 ish one, sir." His beneficent smile belied the state 
 ment. " I am content to admit that I keep it up for 
 my private gratification. That is not a laudable ob 
 ject, you will say. No, it would not look well in a text. 
 But at a certain age, a man must try to get along with 
 fewer laudable objects ; one must treat one's self with re 
 spect, even indulge one's self perhaps. That is my plan." 
 
 "You should begin to carry it out, father," said 
 Constance; "one who goes out of his way to assume 
 others' burdens, and drives twenty miles to remedy an 
 imaginary complaint is hardly doing battle for the 
 cause of selfishness." 
 
 " Well, well ; the theory holds good still. I was speak 
 ing of my pleasures, dear. My duties are a different 
 matter. Do you happen to know faz Republic?" he 
 asked of March, suddenly.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 29 
 
 The young man flushed. " The a London daily ! " 
 
 stammered he, "certainly, sir." 
 
 " That is one of my indulgences. You know they 
 sympathize with us. The United States has no better 
 friend. Yes, I write them occasionally with some 
 regularity, I may say. It is a great interest for me 
 yes, yes, quite an interest," continued the old man 
 absently, rubbing the snowy stubble on his chin, after 
 a habit he had. " I have an intellectual recreation and 
 a physical recreation you see : that and my garden. 
 Yes, I enjoy it. But I suppose I shall have to give 
 it up after a while," he said, abruptly, looking at March, 
 whose eyes fell. "They will be sending over a young 
 er man to replace me before long. I have my ideas, 
 of course, but they are the ideas of the past. We 
 have been growing very rapidly over here lately, Mr. 
 March." 
 
 March was spared comment by an accident which at 
 the moment befell a dish in the hands of the servant ; 
 but for the remainder of the meal his thoughts were 
 extremely uncomfortable. 
 
 When they rose from the table he proposed to re 
 tire, but the Moravian was obdurately hospitable. 
 
 " The inn, sir ! Have you not learned that the 
 Americans have other ideas of hospitality ? " inquired 
 he gravely, " I will send for your portmanteau at 
 once, sir. It is for you to say only how long you can 
 consent to remain with us," the doctor ended with his 
 beaming smile. "No, no ! " he cried, at March's pro 
 test, " I shall take it as an affront, sir, if you return to 
 the inn. That was very well for the moment until we 
 could meet, but now you arc Lady Amprcy's friend, 
 sir, and therefore mine."
 
 30 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 March could only submit. For the day or two that 
 he felt it right to remain, as a tribute to Lady Amprey, 
 this arrangement Avas clearly pleasanter than his own. 
 The inn he had found a trifle stuffy, though marvel 
 lously clean, in the Moravian manner, and he found 
 his heart opening vaguely to Dr. Van Cleef, who was 
 not only likable for himself, but had the additional ad 
 vantage of having unconsciously allowed him to do him 
 a kindness. But when, on the third day of his stay, not 
 having made his intentions known to his entertainer, 
 he went to secure his place in the coach, a letter was 
 handed him from Mr. Frederick Lincoln. It appeared 
 that he now found himself at liberty to take the respite 
 of which lie had spoken, from what he called "confine 
 ment at hard labor" something which consisted in sit 
 ting under the shadow of a freshly-gilt sign, awaiting 
 clients and that his determination to give his English 
 cousin the benefit of this holiday still held good. He 
 was not to be looked for, however, it appeared, for 
 some days. "Our stage coaches do not travel post 
 haste, my dear fellow, or in any other variety of haste 
 known to travellers," he wrote " (this you may have 
 discovered), and there is a charming uncertainty about 
 the date of our meeting, not to mention the date of my 
 departure. Pray don't expect me, for if you should 
 intermit the occupation for an hour or so, I should 
 come at that time." Upon reflection, March did not 
 know w r hy he should not await his gay cousin here. 
 He should do a wrong to his entertainer's frank hos 
 pitality he felt, in doubting his welcome so long as he 
 chose to stay. He had finished his tour of investiga 
 tion ; he had purposely left this for the last. A large 
 tract of land had been offered him a little to the south,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 31 
 
 which he had not expected to visit. But if he waited 
 he might go and return. He was inclined to believe it 
 extraordinarily adapted to his colonizing design, and 
 when Lincoln came, they could go somewhere for a 
 fortnight before he need sail for England. 
 
 Having yielded to the abundant Moravian hospitality 
 he made a point of seeing the best in it. Judea was 
 exquisitely provincial, certainly, but that was part of its 
 charm, and March at least would not have added a pen 
 nyweight of sophistication to it if lie could. If it were 
 to be complained that the life was absurdly narrow, 
 March, in his invincible satisfaction for the moment 
 with it, would have freely owned the truth of all that 
 could be said in this direction, but he would have urged 
 that one might sometimes grow a little tired of the 
 broader life. One could always angle in the wide, swift 
 currents ; it was interesting to whip the brooks occa 
 sionally. This was, of course, especially true when 
 those brooks were American. The genuine hospitality 
 was not an every day matter ; when one was in the lux 
 urious enjoyment of it, for what could it be advantage 
 ously exchanged ? 
 
 His life from day to day was very simple, and though 
 it embraced much observation in the direct line of his 
 mission, seemed to have no other very large aim. 
 Nevertheless he was fully occupied. There appeared 
 to be a great many things in Judea that might be done 
 with pleasure, and Dr. Van Cleef busied himself un- 
 wearyingly in searching these out and setting them be 
 fore him. 
 
 " I want to drive you to the Old Basin this after 
 noon," he would say at breakfast ; or on another morn 
 ing, " Constance, my dear, why not show Mr. March
 
 32 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Indian Gorge to-day ? Now there are the clock works, 
 You have seen them? Oh, of course, but not Moravian 
 clock works;" and "we omitted the Widows' Choir 
 yesterday, Constance. You must take Mr. March through 
 it. I want you to see our whole system, sir." The doctor 
 seemed to think some part of his duty left undone in a 
 day for which he had provided no certain plan, and his 
 repertoire was apparently exhaustless. But March en 
 joyed the days which were less carefully mapped at least 
 as well ; and his issueless wanderings with Constance 
 through the settlement; and their morning talks in the 
 garden had a value of their own which the pleasantest 
 of their regularly schemed excursions and they were 
 certainly delightful in their way quite lacked. 
 
 Constance did not permit their guest to disturb the 
 even order of her daily occupations, however. In the 
 afternoon she often spun a graceful employment, at 
 which, in the Moravian habit, she sang the Spinne 
 Licdcr. As she softly hummed the quaint airs which 
 the church of the Unitas Fratrum has wisely provided 
 for this, as for all the industries of her children, her 
 daintily-made foot rose and fell in time, and while the 
 easy motions of her head and figure recurred in 
 harmony, one hand spanned the distaff as the other 
 ran to and fro, drawing forth the slight thread, and 
 returning. In the evening she was wont to sit before 
 the great, cheery wood fire, the natural centre of their 
 little circle. While her father read Miss Cynthia 
 knitted, and March talked with Constance. At these 
 times she was often skilfully elaborating some woman's 
 fancy in embroidery by the light of the massive cande 
 labrum, or doing that more prosaic sewing which the 
 laundresses of Judea were accustomed to render
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 33 
 
 weekly to the personal care of the housewife. Toward 
 the close of the evening she would lay aside her work. 
 As they sat thus confronting the flaming logs in the 
 wide chimney-mouth, their talk was of many things ; 
 and if the literature or the art of which they occasion 
 ally spoke clung rather anxiously to English skirts, 
 that was perhaps to be expected, though disappointing 
 to March's adoptive patriotism. If America was to 
 borrow altogether in matters of this sort, however, it 
 was agreeable to discover that her daughters occasion- 
 
 o o 
 
 ally knew these loan collections, as it were, so very 
 well. 
 
 March took the journey to the southward which he 
 had proposed to himself, and spent several days in 
 travelling about a region which impressed him as 
 particularly favorable to his purpose. It was not only 
 that the land was fat, and seemed waiting wistfully for 
 the plough. There was the desirable neighborhood 
 of cities, and the near presence of a considerable 
 village ; it was all in a particularly lovely valley. 
 When he returned to Judea, he occupied some days 
 in rendering an account of it to the proposing immi 
 grants on the other side of the water. As he came 
 down into the garden one morning, after finishing his 
 work for the day, he perceived Constance bending 
 over a flower-bed from which she was steadily plucking 
 the weeds. She wore a pair of tattered gloves. For 
 the first time since March had known her, she had laid 
 aside the society cap, and wore an enormous straw 
 sun-shade. She looked up to greet him, with her clear 
 skin flushed from her exertion. Down somewhere in 
 the depths of her great sun-bonnet glowed her face, 
 and, as she bent it again upon the bed, March was left
 
 34 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 a wide prospect of straw, brightened by the broad blue 
 ribbon that attached the monstrous piece of millinery 
 to her head. 
 
 " Have you been at work ?" she asked, hollowly, from 
 her umbrageous shelter. 
 
 "No; not in the sense that you are at work. I 
 suppose I may say I've been playing rather hard. I've 
 been writing." 
 
 "You do a great deal of writing." 
 
 "Why, I have to get up my reports, you know. I've 
 been rather lazy recently. My journey furnished me 
 with some material that I thought I might as well do 
 up at once." 
 
 Constance went thoughtfully on with her weeding. 
 After a moment, "Do you know, I've wondered if you 
 would not be thought how shall I say it if they 
 wouldn't think in England you had a good deal of 
 purpose. That is a clumsy way of putting it. But," 
 rising, " you know what I mean. Are they all as much 
 in earnest over there?" 
 
 " You don't expect me to answer, do you ? " 
 
 " I don't know that I do. But I should like you to." 
 
 " You offer me the opportunity of saying hard things 
 of my countrymen, to the elevation of myself. That's 
 very flattering ; but I can hardly take advantage of it." 
 
 As she stood before him, he smiled at her laughing 
 face, as it showed in the remote vista of the sun-bonnet. 
 
 " I didn't mean that you should reply directly. I 
 was only giving you the text. I hoped you would 
 talk." 
 
 " It would be a little like the Archbishop of Canter 
 bury taking himself for a text, and preaching on the 
 Primate of all England. But I'm willing to say, what
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 35 
 
 is obvious to you, that the entire body of British youth 
 is not as anxious as I was to visit America." 
 
 " No, I see that," agreed Constance ; " and what made 
 you anxious ? Will you let me ask that ? " 
 
 " That's a long story. But I suppose I was a little 
 impatient of our slow ways of coming at the truth, and 
 I wanted to see a country that seemed to have received 
 all the new messages, and to be exemplifying them in 
 its government. I thought that a fine thing." 
 
 "And is it?" 
 
 " It seems the best we know, so far. I don't see how 
 anything could be better. But it is only an experi 
 ment yet. No one can tell how it will come out." 
 
 " But you are willing to throw your fortunes in with 
 it ? You are ready to give up your certainties for our 
 uncertainties ? " 
 
 " Well, perhaps, our certainties are not so precious as 
 you imagine. For my own part, I found them rather 
 too certain." 
 
 " Yes, there is a good deal in the freedom we offer, I 
 suppose. We say, in effect, 'You may be anyone's 
 equal, if you will.' That makes a tempting ground for 
 work ; it is a great opportunity for young men who 
 have their way to make. I'm afraid I don't believe it 
 all ; but it is an immense chance, if your place is not 
 already secure." 
 
 " You mean that my place is secure that I have 
 nothing to gain ? Well, I don't know how I can blink 
 that. I should do very well at home, I suppose. But 
 in my position of one who would do very well as it is, 
 it's rather my business, don't you think, to look about 
 a little for those who are doing particularly ill as it is ? 
 These people that I am agent for are not so badly off ;
 
 36 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 though, to be frank, they arc not wealthy. 1 don't 
 know that I should have taken their commission if I 
 had thought only of them. But there are hundreds of 
 thousands of men in England, Miss Van Cleef, who are 
 really badly off very badly off, indeed. I couldn't tell 
 you. They're not starving ; but they're not living, and 
 they have no voice in a government, which, with no 
 deliberate evil intent it's a very good government as 
 they go ; it lias simply fallen into an extremely stupid 
 way of doing things, and won't think oppresses them 
 very considerably. It is not the government, alone, I'm 
 afraid ; it is the whole system." 
 
 " But you are part of the system." 
 
 " Yes, that's it ! " 
 
 " If it falls, you go with it." 
 
 " Why, yes, I fancy I should come in for my share of 
 the ruin. But, as second son, I mightn't get very much. 
 They don't, you know." 
 
 " Perhaps it would cost more than you think. I 
 can't help saying that it seems a very generous attitude." 
 
 " No, it's only fair. And, even so, I probably sha'n't 
 live up to it, whatever it is. If I'm in earnest, as you 
 say, my earnestness has an unfortunate habit of going 
 to sleep." 
 
 " It's only taking it's natural rest," smiled Constance. 
 " I'm sure it has earned it." 
 
 " I wish I thought so," returned March, doubtfully, 
 as they walked toward the orchard at the end of the 
 garden.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 YOUNG Lincoln did not come, and made no sign, but 
 March stayed on with exemplary patience. On a cer 
 tain morning nearly a fortnight after his arrival, it 
 must have been obvious to the least watchful of guests 
 at Dr. Van Cleef's breakfast-table that some unusual 
 force stirred the air. Miss Cynthia, to be sure, did not 
 forget her usual exact greetings ; but there was a touch 
 of haste in her invariably deliberate gait as she entered 
 the dining-room, and she ate her breakfast with some 
 thing more than her usual air of severe importance. It 
 was noticeable that she failed to behead her egg, set 
 in its china stand, with an accuracy which would have 
 borne mathematical tests, and this was uncommon. She 
 was clearly repressing an inclination to haste. During 
 the morning various irregular sounds and odors issued 
 from the kitchen, and Constance presently informed 
 March that her father had sent forth invitations to a 
 chosen few to drink tea with him that evening in his 
 guest's honor. 
 
 Miss Cynthia's repeated journeys to the store-room, 
 and jangling of keys, and rigorous oversight of the 
 elaborate culinary operations, accompanied by readings 
 from certain authentic cookery books to her exquisitely 
 stupid assistants, were not without their result. The 
 tea, from the kitchen point of view, was a notable suc 
 cess. Never were such tongues and hams, such flaky
 
 38 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 biscuits, such golden honey, sucli luscious cakes! These 
 dainties covered not too profusely a damask cloth, 
 upon which the fruits of the earth were cunningly 
 wrought ; the spongy pat of cottage cheese did not en 
 tirely hide the impossible apple on whose plump cheek 
 it was set, and one soon saw that the centipede, on the 
 back of which rode the glittering tea-making equip 
 ment from which Constance ministered, was merely a 
 luxuriant vine. The capacious pitcher of buttermilk, 
 which Miss Cynthia had considerately provided for the 
 unpampered tastes of the brethren, flanked the trem 
 bling mould of jelly ; and above all towered in a great 
 glass dish, whose bowl bore the relation to its support 
 that the foliage of the palm bears to the trunk, Miss 
 Cynthia's famous preserved pears. The thick facets of 
 the glass gave back the light of the candelabra with an 
 iridescence which rivalled that of the tinkling pendents 
 of those splendid structures themselves. Mr. Keator, 
 the minister of the settlement, gazing absently at its 
 glitter, found a moisture gathering at length in his not 
 too strong eyes. The smooth, creamy half-cones, swim 
 ming in their rich syrup, looked forth through the 
 shining glass as if challenging the modest eldresses 
 who sat facing them to reproduce them. The spacious 
 dining-room was ceiled and wainscoted in oak, and 
 some excellent paintings of fish and birds, in the well- 
 established style, brightened the long panels. The 
 usual monster open fire burned on the andirons, and 
 its glowing shadows danced over the oaken walls, and 
 ilickered in the faces of those about the table. 
 
 Constance sat with her back to the fire, fronting her 
 father, and commanding the brief line of guests on 
 either side. The women were upon her left, the men
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 39 
 
 on her right. Their inexpressive countenances looked 
 waitingly toward the clergyman, Mr. Keator, who had 
 been placed next Dr. Van Cleef. The minister was look 
 ing about musingly, apparently absorbed in thoughts 
 not directly related to the present scene, but at Con 
 stance's word he returned to himself, and giving her a 
 grateful look, glanced about from habit, as if awaiting 
 a deeper silence, and said a fervent blessing, followed 
 by- the verse appointed for the day in the Moravian 
 calendar. Then Constance inquired of the elder next 
 her his preferences as to milk and sugar, and the meal 
 was begun by all with frank hunger. The company 
 gathered about this abundant table was not large, but 
 it lacked the easy freedom which is supposed to char 
 acterize small parties. It is comprehensible that ket 
 tle-drums were not quite usual things with these good 
 people, and the presence of a stranger may also have 
 had its effect, at least upon the eldresses. They did not 
 often meet young men, and though this young man was 
 certainly agreeable as one of them said "he seemed 
 to have the gift of talking uncommon " they had not 
 the facility which could teach them to adapt themselves 
 to his foreign air. They accepted March a little less for 
 mally as the meal wore on, but no hospitable effort of 
 Dr. Van Cleef's induced the sisters to take a more de 
 cided initiative in the conversation than was implied in 
 making a timid inquiry or two of the stranger touching 
 the conditions of life in England. One, a little bolder, 
 began a serious conversation with Mr. Keator upon the 
 state of Moravian missions in Greenland, but appearing 
 to feel suddenly that this might be thought impolite as 
 not including the guest of the evening, quickly paused. 
 This sister was at the head of the Young Women's Choir,
 
 40 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 and she was accompanied by the eldress who adminis 
 tered the like office among the widoAvs. There were 
 besides four other sisters, wives of the elders. March 
 wondered what age these quiet women might have at 
 tained. The eye, as in the case of nuns of the Romish 
 Church, refused to inform one. The countenances, 
 gazing calmly from the prim white coifs, seemed sin 
 gularly fresh and full. Their owners were probably 
 over thirty, but how much ? Perhaps ten years, per 
 haps forty. Who should say? Their dress was, if pos 
 sible, an exaggeration of the shrinking from display 
 characteristic of all the sisters ; March noticed that the 
 stuff of their gowns was coarser and darker than others 
 whom he had seen. 
 
 "Have you visited Bristol, sir?" inquired the elder 
 next March. 
 
 " I have passed through it, yes ; are you familiar 
 with the place, Elder Weiss ? " 
 
 " No, no, oh no ! we have a strong congregation 
 there, that is all. I thought you might have met some 
 of the brethren," said the elder, innocently. " But I 
 suppose it is a large town." 
 
 "We have a good many congregations," said another 
 brother, who had been made known to March as Bro 
 ther Berg. "They are quite a deal scattered ; but, if 
 we could get them all together, it would be a goodly 
 company. We are an old church, you know, sir. 
 Most would not think that there was so many of us. 
 We have mission stations in the West Indies, in Green 
 land, among the native Indians, and elsewhere. We 
 try to do a good deal in missions. The Church has a 
 strong hold in your country, as Elder Weiss says, 
 sir ; but we are best in Germany. There is where
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 41 
 
 we began. We rank fairly with the other sects 
 there." 
 
 " It is not for us to boast of our strength, Brother 
 Berg," reproved one of the elders. 
 
 There was more spasmodic talk of a not less artificial 
 sort, and the meal proved sufficiently formal. Dr. Van 
 Cleef amiably exhausted his strength in the endeavor 
 to uphold a pretence of conversation ; and in this he 
 was seconded by Constance, whose attacks upon the 
 taciturnity of the elders merited a larger reward. 
 March did more than his share, and generously accept 
 ing the responsibility, not only of his own entertainment, 
 but of that of the mute eldresses, who sat opposite 
 him, talked vivaciously. But even with the occasional 
 laconic spurs which the failing conversation received 
 from Miss Cynthia, it lagged undeniably, and Dr. Van 
 Cleef at length sought refuge in giving the signal 
 which announced the completion of the meal. The 
 people rose with soft scraping of chairs, and moved 
 slowly toward the parlor. 
 
 " It's a failure, daughter," said the Doctor, in de 
 pressed undertone, as he passed Constance, lingering 
 by her seat. " I am afraid we can't deny it. It pains 
 me because of Mr. March. I want him to see us at our 
 best." 
 
 Constance laughed lightly. " Don't fear for him, 
 father. He is doing capitally. It is the others. 
 Poor father ! But it sha'n't be a failure. Let me tell 
 you something." She put up her hand and whispered 
 in his ear, "We will make it succeed;" and she left 
 his side swiftly, looking back to nod brightly to him 
 with a laugh of intelligence. While the guests in the 
 drawing-room, to which they had come, stood looking
 
 42 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 doubtfully about them, as if it were occasionally a 
 rather serious responsibility to have charge of one's 
 self, she went silently to the harpsichord, and, seating 
 herself on the long bench before it, touched the 
 yellowed keys softly. The faint, tinny rattle that went 
 on constantly somewhere in the interior mechanism of 
 the instrument \vas not agreeable, but it did not seem 
 to annoy her, and she rambled thoughtfully into one 
 of the old Moravian melodies dear to them all, raising 
 her voice quietly to accompany its low, glad strains. 
 The company, which had turned toward her at the first 
 note, seated itself gradually, and listened with silent 
 pleasure. She struck into "Coronation" with a loud, 
 firm prelude, and March came over and joined her. 
 With a sympathetic smile, he added his strong un 
 tutored tenor to her rich soprano, and at this bold ex 
 hibition, a visible embarrassment seized the gathering, 
 and even Dr. Van Cleef did not seem thoroughly com 
 fortable. Nevertheless, one of the younger sisters 
 chimed timidly in the second line, and sang the stanza 
 through with them, while Miss Cynthia uncertainly 
 hummed the air from her lonely seat. Then, as Con 
 stance began again : 
 
 "Let every nation, every tribe," 
 
 all the eldresses joined her, self-forgettingly. Before 
 the second stanza was done, the bass and tenor voices 
 reinforced them from the other side of the room, and 
 there was a real thrill in the repetition : 
 
 "And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
 Brother Berg asked for " Brattle Street," and the 
 self-consciousness of the little company forgot to in 
 trude on their joy in the sweet notes of the ancient
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 43 
 
 hymn. Constance sat feeling musingly for the accom 
 paniment, and looking up at a portrait of her mother, 
 by Gilbert, that lit up the dusky mahogany panel 
 above the harpsichord, while she lifted her voice in 
 that absent consecration, without which singing is as 
 meaningless as drum-beating. Her full soprano rose 
 confidently to the old-fashioned quaverings of the last 
 
 line : 
 
 "With be-e-te--e-r-r hopes be filled," 
 
 and rang and echoed above the others. It Avas indeed 
 an uncommon voice ; and in her ardor for her father, 
 and the genuine pleasure of use which one gifted with 
 such an organ must feel, she poured it forth in a kind 
 of glory of melody. The others ceased from her one 
 by one, and she presently found herself singing alone : 
 
 " My lifted eye, without a tear, 
 
 The gathering storm shall see ; 
 My steadfast heart shall know no fear 
 That he-a-a-rt wi-i-il rest on Thee." 
 
 She sang on unconsciously, her voice rising and fall 
 ing tenderly to the solemn cadence. As she reached 
 the last line she lifted it in its ultimate power, and 
 dwelling on the quaint quavers, finished in a full- 
 throated burst. 
 
 "Why, why aren't you singing?" she cried, turning 
 about on her bench. 
 
 "We were listening to you," said Mr. Keator. 
 
 " That's so," asserted the stoutest and merriest of 
 the elders. "You have a beautiful voice, Miss Van 
 Cleef." Why not Sister Van Cleef ? March wondered. 
 " We hear it at the church, but there's so many others. 
 I don't know as I ever did hear you before, so close, as 
 you might say, and I don't suppose the rest of them
 
 44 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 have." Constance listened smilingly to these well- 
 intentioned gallantries, comparing them with sad amuse 
 ment to certain others in her memory. " You know 
 what Scripture says about keeping your light under a 
 bushel," the elder went on, with a kindly twinkle in 
 his eye. " If you've got a silver piece let the light 
 shine on it, I say and and call in your friends and 
 neighbors," he ended, with humorous irrelevance. 
 
 " That is not the way it is in the Bible, is it, Elder 
 Reidcl ? " deprecated one of the sisters, meekly. 
 
 "Well, I wasn't quoting exactly," asserted the elder. 
 " I mixed up Matthew and Luke a little for illustration 
 for illustration, you know." 
 
 Constance had turned back to the key-board dur 
 ing this discussion, and was murmurously connect 
 ing herself with her memories. An air seemed finally 
 to grow out of this tuneful confusion, and the com 
 pany finding it familiar, sang through the hymn which 
 was associated with it. A Moravian " Hymn and Tune 
 Book " was produced, and the sisters and brethren, 
 gathering about the harpsichord, asked for their favor 
 ites in turn. March, who, after his friendly motion in 
 support of Constance's effort to induce an easier at 
 mosphere, had left the instrument and joined Mr. 
 Keator in a remote corner of the room, remained listen 
 ing with the minister to the now harmonious and joy 
 ous sounds. Occasionally, while one of the sisters ran 
 over the volume from which they were singing, in 
 search of a particular air, the two exchanged some 
 words in undertone ; but for the most part they 
 listened earnestly, the minister always with a kind of 
 reverence. Occasionally the singers used the old Ger 
 man words, oftener the English ; and if the diction of
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 45 
 
 neither was irreproachable, the idea which they ex 
 pressed was at least perfectly clear ; and they were 
 sung with a fervor which was in itself a species of de 
 votion, and left nothing to be desired. 
 
 The singing of sacred hymns has not been considered 
 a means of entertaining an evening party ; but this was 
 not the usual evening party, and Constance exhibited 
 her discernment in choosing it as the most efficacious 
 salt for the thawing of the obdurate ice. Music was 
 not reserved for extraordinary events by the Mora 
 vians ; it was the companion and brightener of each 
 day ; it was summons and farewell, the messenger of 
 grief and- happiness, the Church's condolence and con 
 gratulation. It was the language of praise, thanks 
 giving, and worship ; of hope, and promise, and prayer. 
 It bid to church, it illumined the ritual, it ended the 
 service, and went home with each brother and sister to 
 dwell with them, as support, counsellor, and friend. 
 Men were born to the glad note of trumpets, they were 
 married in hearing of their jubilant sympathy, their 
 bodies were carried to the grave to the harmony of 
 them, and over the open sepulchre the horns blew the 
 last farewell to the poor clod beneath. Among the 
 company in which we are interested, the singing begot 
 an agreeable sympathy, and when they turned, at length, 
 from the harpsicord and disposed themselves about the 
 apartment, they fell naturally into capitally assorted 
 groups, and began to talk among themselves without 
 self-constraint. Dr. Van Cleef was engaging Mr. Keator 
 in earnest conversation, and Constance went over and 
 let stout Elder Riedel make her what compliments he 
 would. March crossed the room and bravely seated 
 himself on the hair-cloth sofa between the two eldresses,
 
 46 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 whose shyness he had measurably conquered at tea. 
 He seemed to succeed admirably with them, for they 
 were presently laughing with him in decent joy. The 
 elders, who were all married, but were not invariably 
 accompanied by their wives, wandered about in their 
 long brown coats, holding discussions with one an 
 other upon Church matters, deliberating questions 
 touching the management of the choirs with the sisters, 
 or inquiring the news from the Indian mission settle 
 ments. Dr. Van Cleef, who, from time to time cast 
 anxious glances toward March to assure himself that 
 he was not being.bored, at last excused himself to Mr. 
 Keator, and went over toward the hair-cloth sofa. 
 
 " There are a great many blacks in the West Indies, 
 you say?" one of the prim, pretty sisters was enquir 
 ing. " Yes, that is what the missionaries write us. 
 They tell us they are a great trial," she sighed. " They 
 do not seem to take to learning, somehow ; and even 
 when they are converted they steal and speak falsely, 
 and the ministers do not seem to be able to make them 
 see the wrong in it. It is a great trial," repeated she, 
 "but I suppose the narrow way is not easy any 
 where." 
 
 " No," returned the young man, as Dr. Van Cleef ap 
 proached, " I believe that those who try to pass through 
 it on horseback generally make a failure of it." The 
 sisters looked at each other. The comparison may have 
 seemed questionable. 
 
 " Keep your seat, sir, keep your seat," exclaimed Dr. 
 Van Cleef. Then, perceiving the embarrassment of 
 the eldresses, " Mr. March only means, I fancy, that 
 there is no royal road to virtue ; we shall agree to 
 that, I think. Yes, yes ; we shall all agree to that,"
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 47 
 
 and he pulled nervously at his stock, while he smiled 
 cheerily down at them. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Keator had encountered Constance 
 moving away from her elder. He took her hand with 
 out speaking, and looked solicitously in her face. As 
 he continued absently to hold her hand, " You have 
 tired yourself, I am afraid, my Miss Van Cleef." 
 
 She smiled. " You think I am not so strong as the 
 sisters ? That's true, but I can play for an hour on 
 the harpsichord." She smiled at him with the conven 
 tional smile of conversation. 
 
 " No, no ; it is not that," said he, slowly dropping 
 her hand " not that exactly. It is the nervous strain. 
 I have been watching you." 
 
 " You are very good," murmured she. 
 
 " I don't mean " He paused a moment. " You 
 
 make an excellent hostess, my my dear girl," he said ; 
 " but you let the work wear upon you. I have been 
 observing you, as I say. You have seemed anxious 
 and urged. You burn too many candles." He spoke 
 with quiet deliberation, in a marvellously gentle voice, 
 and ended with his winning smile. 
 
 Mr. Keator, facing the blazing wood fire, with the 
 light of sympathy in his eyes, might have been thought 
 at the moment a handsome man ; but, in the common 
 acceptation, he was as remote as possible from merit 
 ing that epithet. Commonly we think of a stalwart 
 figure in using the adjective, and Mr. Keator's, alas ! 
 was not a stalwart figure. It seemed to have been 
 loosely put together, like a hastily-made house. The 
 joints were uncertainly knit, and responded to the de 
 mands of their owner in the distant, secondary manner 
 of the last wheel in much-geared machinery. When he 
 4
 
 48 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 stood, his frame settled naturally into a relaxed pos 
 ture, and his sitting was a species of disaster. A pain 
 ful infirmity, which had made of one foot a mere im 
 potent weight, compelled him to use a crutch ; and he 
 went about leaning his light form on its assured sup 
 port. It need hardly be added that he was of an ex 
 quisitely sensitive nature, and the ingenious reader 
 would guess, if it were left unsaid, that his face, if not 
 a handsome one, was at least a notable one. It was 
 one of those unusual visages that tempt painting. In 
 deed, it suggested certain paintings. There were the 
 spare, wan features, the high cheek-bones, the irregular 
 lines, the passionless effect of those uncorrupted monks 
 of the early Church whose lineaments cling in rare 
 canvases. It was a sweet and benignant face, and it 
 had, before all, that indefinable aspect which certifies a 
 man to the divine calling. Mr. Keator was little more 
 than thirty-five, and these characteristics were perhaps 
 more conspicuous because of their natural attribution 
 to an older man. He was strikingly tall, and his 
 stooping shoulders were swept by the half-curl of the 
 even, satin locks which fell from his admirable fore 
 head. There was a fine softness, a singular modesty in 
 his presence. 
 
 " I may I have a little talk with you, Miss Van 
 Cleef ? " he asked presently, with embarrassment. 
 " They are occupied just now," he went on, indicating 
 the shifting groups ; " our absence will not be noted for 
 a short space. Will you come into the other room 
 with me ? " His manner grew more confused, and he 
 finished with an anxious smile. His bearing might 
 have been faiftied to refer to something tacitly under 
 stood between them. Constance shot a swift, ques-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 49 
 
 tioning glance of intelligence at him. " No, no ; not 
 that," he assured her, in response. "You have my 
 promise," said he, with a touch of reproach. 
 
 " Very well," returned the girl. " But let us go to 
 the conservatory." Thither accordingly they bent their 
 steps, Constance leading, and Mr. Keator's crutch re 
 sounding upon the bare parquet floor of the hall. 
 
 "There are seeds there, I think," she reminded him 
 kindly, as he leaned against the edge of one of the 
 beds. 
 
 "Ah ah, excuse me," begged the minister, snatch 
 ing up his crutch and hobbling down to a seat nearer 
 her. " I was not thinking, I He turned to meas 
 
 ure his distance, as is the wont of cripples, before sit 
 ting, and did not conclude. He sank upon the bench, 
 and remained looking at her painfully for some mo 
 ments ; his glance wandered over her in a kind of per 
 plexed compassion, and he seemed several times about 
 to speak, but as often restrained himself. At length 
 he moodily said, " I could wish I might tell you this 
 vicariously. I would much rather another did it." 
 
 " If it is painful, pray leave it unsaid, Mr. Keator ; I 
 am sure I shall not like it, and it will only wound you." 
 
 " Nay, nay ; it is my duty. I must not shuffle out of 
 it, even if my conscience would suffer it. But I scarcely 
 know how to begin," said he, with a puzzled sigh. 
 " How to say it so that it may not offend you," ques 
 tioned he with himself. " It may even estrange you 
 from me wholly," cried the minister, looking up in 
 sudden alarm. " Alas, I am selfish. If that comes, it 
 must ; but it is right that I should tell you." 
 
 Constance was regarding him with distress. She re 
 membered, afterward, that the full moon was shining
 
 50 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 through the panes above them and falling in a kind of 
 aureole upon her companion's head. She knew that it 
 was very warm in the greenhouse, but she could not 
 muster resolution to rise and shut the damper of the 
 little stove. The hum of conversation in the other 
 room came to her vaguely, as through a dream. 
 
 "Miss Van Cleef," said the clergyman, suddenly, 
 with quivering lips, "the Elders' Conference felt it its 
 duty at the last session to discuss a matter concerning 
 you." 
 
 Constance's self-possession returned instantly. "The 
 Elders' Conference was very rude," she said, quietly. 
 
 " Nay ; they had no choice. The regulations of the 
 Church did not leave it within their discretion. I wish 
 I might spare you, my dear girl ; but I must speak 
 plainly. Your association with with the young man 
 we met to-night is offensive to the Society's rules. I 
 thought you would rather I spoke to you than trouble 
 your father. I have waited, thinking he might go 
 away, and that this would be unnecessary." He paused 
 fearfully, and watched to see how she received the an 
 nouncement. 
 
 Her eyes shone with suppressed passion, but she 
 merely shut her lips and said, coldly, "Well ?" 
 
 He stared at her an instant, with little comprehen 
 sion. "I don't understand," he said, at last. 
 
 " How does that affect me ?" 
 
 " Why, you are a member of the Society ; are you 
 not ?" 
 
 " A member of the Society," repeated Constance, 
 with a compassionate smile, "you know how much, 
 and in what way. When I connected myself with your 
 body to please my father, you can imagine that I
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 51 
 
 scarcely expected the fact to be used as a weapon against 
 me." 
 
 "You put it harshly," said Mr. Keator. "You have 
 not fully established your connection with the Church I 
 know. But you are a probationary member, and there 
 must be restrictions. That is implied in admission to all 
 privileges," he urged gently. 
 
 " That may be true ; I don't know. But you may be 
 sure that I did not agree to such an implication. Can 
 you fancy, Mr. Keator, that I meant to give up any part 
 of my liberty?" 
 
 " I don't know. We supposed so/' said he. " You 
 went through the forms." 
 
 " The forms ! " cried she, with irony. " Yes, I remem 
 ber ; but I didn't make a vow to refrain from conversing 
 with young men." 
 
 " Pray don't, Miss Van Cleef." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon !" cried the girl, impetuously. 
 " But you must remember my feelings. Mr. March is 
 
 my father's guest ; that, if nothing else- ." She 
 
 paused. 
 
 " I am sure you do not believe, my dear girl, that we 
 feel less than your father the obligations of hospitality. 
 All the traditions of our faith bid us give strangers gen 
 erous welcome." 
 
 " And yet you blame him for receiving Mr. March." 
 
 " No, no. Any of us would have done as much, 
 though perhaps not under the same conditions. The 
 conditions are peculiar, since you are not in full com 
 munion with the Church, nor a member of one of the 
 choirs. But we could not expect your father to take 
 the forethought natural to a brother whose life had been 
 lived under our system. We remember that Dr. Van
 
 52 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Cleef has passed the better part of his days in the world, 
 and no worldly habit of thought could have taught him 
 to look forward to the dangers we now see." 
 
 " You mean that one of you would have perceived that 
 Mr. March would stay a long time and become well 
 acquainted with me," said Constance. 
 
 " Pray do not take the tone of separateness from us, 
 Constance ! You know that we do not hold you or your 
 father wrong in this matter. No one could be more 
 zealous for the Church or more loyal to it than he, and 
 we have liked to believe that you too were in good will 
 toward us, and that you would presently find a more 
 intimate spiritual home among us. I come to you as to 
 one of ourselves, that we may reason together touching 
 a situation which no one has intentionally brought about, 
 but which, without our will no doubt without yours 
 is upon our hands. If you will bring yourself to look 
 upon what I have unwillingly said, in that light, I am 
 sure you will see the sophistry of your ideas." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Constance. " I am un 
 likely to see it otherwise. I must not let you take away 
 the idea that the elders' wishes will affect my action." 
 
 " Oh, I feared that you would take it this way," said he, 
 despairingly. 
 
 " How else could I take it ? Did you expect me to 
 acquiesce ? " 
 
 " We do not expect you to abstain altogether from 
 intercourse with him. That would be most grateful to 
 us, but it would not be possible now. All that we request 
 is that your acquaintance with him be what shall I 
 say ? a little more formal. You see the example it puts 
 before the eyes of the young people's choirs ; it is dan 
 gerous to them. But it is most dangerous to you. We
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 53 
 
 must look at the chances fairly. Conceive for a moment 
 the result of your marriage outside the Society." 
 
 " Pray be reasonable, Mr. Keator ! " 
 
 The Moravian looked hurt. " I did not say it was 
 probable," pursued he, with unaltered mildness. " But 
 very few things are impossible. If you will permit me to 
 suppose it, what then of your religious profession ? 
 members of our Church may not marry with those from 
 the world outside, you know. What of your quiet, and, 
 I believe, happy life here with us ? What of your 
 father ? " 
 
 " What, above all, of Mr. Keator ? " 
 
 It was a cruel blow, and the girl would instantly have 
 given worlds to recall it. His pale visage turned a 
 ghastly white, and he rubbed his hand over his face in a 
 dazed way, while he fumbled for his crutch. As he rose 
 painfully upon this support, " I did not intend that," he 
 said, gasping like a wounded animal. " You know that 
 I ah, Constance, you must know that I meant you a 
 kindness ! " 
 
 The infinite gentleness with which he said this ; the 
 almost imperceptible reproach in which there was no 
 bitterness, only a hopeless sorrow, touched the girl un 
 speakably. She could have wept. She rose and forced 
 him to his seat. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Keator, forgive me, forgive me ! I knew 
 that I could be wicked and cruel, but I did not know that I 
 could be so wicked and cruel as that. I must have been 
 mad. And you, who are always so good to me ; do I 
 know that you only meant kindness ? Ah, shall I ever 
 know any thing else ? It will always haunt me. Did I 
 say it ? I should not have believed that I could have 
 said it. It only shows . Make me a Moravian, Mr.
 
 54 -^ VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Keator," she sighed " a sweet, merciful, patient, genu 
 ine Moravian, like yourself. Keep me from such 
 things." 
 
 " My dearest girl, if I only might ! " 
 
 She could not avoid answering his meaning. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know ! " said she, hastily. " But you agreed 
 to wait for my answer to that question, you remember." 
 
 " I have tried to keep my promise," asserted he, mod 
 estly. 
 
 " Tried ! Ah, Mr. Keator, there might be worse lots 
 than to be your wife ! " 
 
 The minister blushed in his happiness. 
 
 A pause fell. The situation between them seemed to 
 take form and life out of the silence, and stood before 
 them embodied, envisaged ; while each clothed it with his 
 own thoughts. 
 
 " I think I owe you some recompense, though, for 
 your goodness now," she said, thoughtfully ; " I feel just 
 as I said about Mr. March." Mr. Keator sighed. " I 
 cannot change my manner toward him, though I will try 
 to manage that our association, as the elders call it, shall 
 be less public ; but for your personal satisfaction I may 
 tell you that there is not the slightest danger of what 
 you speak of, even if he wished it. What I might be led 
 to do by the opposition of the elders is another matter. 
 Does that satisfy you, Mr. Keator ? " she asked, anx 
 iously. 
 
 What could a man do in such case ? If it was a con 
 cession, it certainly conceded very little. It seemed to 
 Mr. Keator that it left many things to be said. Never 
 theless he was fain to be content ; it was perhaps more 
 than he had expected. 
 
 ** I suppose it should," he said, generously.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 55 
 
 " Yes, I think it should," returned Constance ; " and 
 when Mr. March is gone, and I have become a good 
 Moravian " she looked down at her rosy palm " per 
 haps then you may come to me for an answer." 
 
 She glanced at him with shy dignity, and suddenly 
 left his side. Mr. Keator sat looking in speechless rapt 
 ure at the point where she had vanished for a long 
 time. 
 
 The people were still entertaining themselves with 
 placid enjoyment as Constance re-entered the drawing 
 room. She went directly to her father, who was stand 
 ing apart for the moment observing the scene with 
 satisfaction, and took his hand silently. He looked up 
 at her through his gold-rimmed spectacles as he patted 
 her palm. 
 
 " Where have you been, daughter ? " asked Dr. Van 
 Cleef, kindly ; " and where have you left Mr. Keator ? " 
 
 " Mr. Keator is in the conservatory, I think," said she, 
 briefly. 
 
 A faint tremor made itself felt in the hand which the 
 doctor's broad palm enclosed, and he gave his daughter 
 a quick, solicitous glance. But he forebore to question 
 her further, and they stood thus, absently regarding their 
 guests for some moments.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WHEN they had all gone, including Mr. Keator, and 
 the servants had arranged the room after Miss Cynthia's 
 severe taste, Constance went about in dreamy pursuance 
 of her habit, modifying the rigor of the chairs' attitudes. 
 It is not to be supposed that her thoughts were wholly 
 engaged with furniture. March, as he bade her " good 
 night," observed that she went about her work absently, 
 and indeed a host of thoughts occupied her mind. Her 
 decorative touch was no less certain, however, March saw, 
 and the chairs and ornaments of the mantel and tables 
 fell as accurately into the lines of grace as if she had 
 given all of her attention to the matter. Her usual bright 
 " good-night " to him was remote and thoughtful. When 
 he had gone she closed the harpsichord, draped its 
 covering with thoughtful care, and went over to her 
 father, who was sitting before the fire reading a Phila 
 delphia paper, which had reached him by the afternoon 
 stage. 
 
 " Good-night, father." 
 
 The doctor dropped his paper. 
 
 " Good-night, dear," said he, with an emphasis of his 
 invariable caressing tone to her. " Something troubles 
 you," exclaimed he, as she rose after kissing him. " What 
 is it?" 
 
 "You are imaginative, father," returned Constance, 
 looking away.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 57 
 
 " Not so much as I wish I were. If I had more fancy 
 I should use it in making myself believe that you looked 
 quite happy. But my imagination is not equal to that. 
 Don't tell me if you would rather not, my dear. I don't 
 wish to force your confidence, though I should like to 
 share your trouble." 
 
 She glanced at him in hesitation ; then turned her head 
 away once more. Her lips trembled. She was deeply 
 troubled. How willing she would have been to tell him 
 everything ! But she said with a brave smile, 
 
 " It is nothing, father dear nothing. You have a 
 microscope under your eye to-night, that is all." 
 
 " Only my spectacles, I think, dearest. I see very well 
 with them, I admit, but I don't think I see things that 
 aren't before them. Still, still we won't insist. Good 
 night again." 
 
 She stooped and kissed him a second time, and went 
 out, leaving her father staring a little sadly into the fire. 
 
 There was much in her heart ; and she was glad of 
 the shelter of her room to see it more closely. Mr. 
 Keator's love, since he had declared it, a year before, 
 had cost her many anxious and thoughtful hours. Her 
 experience had been that of many a girl of imagination 
 and honesty, for the first time asked in marriage by a 
 fine man to whom her heart has not gone spontan 
 eously out. Her intellect consented to Mr. Keator com 
 pletely. He was good, noble, strong. The list of his 
 just praises was not easily exhaustible. He was indeed 
 in many ways such a man as she had fancied she should 
 wish to marry when the time came ; and this made the 
 dissent of her heart all the harder, especially as it was 
 not an experienced heart and was by no means so clear 
 as she could have wished touching the exact meaning of
 
 5 8 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 what was called love. That she felt some of the symp 
 toms laid down by the books that is to say, by the 
 novelists was merely perplexing, not reassuring. Her 
 father had often told her how people imagined the proper 
 symptoms, given a fancy that they were afflicted 
 with a certain disease, and she remembered too, how 
 frequently he had said that people were never ill accord 
 ing to the books. 
 
 She wished above all things to be honest with herself 
 and with Mr. Keator ; and at the same time she did not 
 know what to do with her imagination. What if, for 
 instance, she was after all in love with him? What if this 
 ample admiration and respect for him, this affection for 
 his fine qualities, this genuine liking for the man himself, 
 which would have led her to sacrifice much to do him a 
 service what if all these in fact meant love ? What 
 standards had she to try love by? But when these 
 ingenious fancies had had their will upon her, a residuum 
 of certainty was left, upon which she acted. She was 
 sure or at least she was almost sure that marriage 
 with Mr. Keator would leave too much unsaid ; it would 
 liquidate only the smallest portion of the debt which she 
 unaggressively believed the world owed her. 
 
 Constance certainly expected much at the world's 
 hands measurable happiness for one thing, and a quiet 
 mind. The action of the elders which Mr. Keator had 
 so gently, so kindly made known to her, was not in the 
 way of fulfilling the world's obligation. She had simply 
 given the matter of her association with March no thought 
 whatever, she said to herself, with some indignation. It 
 was as if she had stooped to pick a casual flower and it had 
 exploded in her face. 
 
 No doubt the reproof of the elders, as they had
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 59 
 
 delivered it, was even worse than Mr. Keator had made 
 it seem. She could not thank the minister too much 
 for making himself the bearer of the message. He had 
 done it out of the purest kindness toward her, know 
 ing that he risked their friendship certainly the chance 
 of her coming to love him. As she thought of this and 
 the cruel rebuff she had given him, she found herself for 
 the thousandth time on the perilous brink of wonder 
 wonder whether in her inmost heart she did not in fact 
 love Mr. Keator. She hastily brought out* her old 
 arguments and trained them upon this fancy; and she 
 had presently decided once more that she liked him too 
 well to marry him an assurance which unfortunately 
 could not blind her inward vision to the effectiveness of 
 Mr. Keator as a spectacle of the patient lover. 
 
 Standing motionless in thought before her mirror, she 
 could not help reflecting upon what would come of it 
 all ; but as she unloosed the golden coil hidden during 
 the day under the society cap, and brushed its long 
 strands with quick motions, she endeavored to think of 
 other things. 
 
 Thoughts of Mr. Keator and his warning did not 
 cease to beset her because she dismissed them. They 
 returned upon her quiet hours importunately, and after 
 a day or two she felt that she must share them with some 
 sympathetic spirit. It was unlike her to be looking 
 outside herself for support. She was more and more 
 troubled, however, by the attempt of the elders to hinder 
 her freedom of action. How much further might they 
 go ? She wished very much to know. It vitally con 
 cerned her future and her peace of mind. She deter 
 mined to take counsel with one who was near both to 
 the society and to her one who would be just to her
 
 60 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Church's customs, yet find sympathy for this especial 
 working of them. 
 
 Sister Zelda was the only woman in the village to 
 whom Constance could have thought of going on such 
 an errand, and yet it seemed a departure from herself 
 to seek advice, even from her. She reproached herself 
 for her hesitancy about her father's people ; but could 
 she help it ? They were not her people. They were not 
 of her spiritual kindred. They were not of her world. 
 Of course, they were of an infinitely better world. 
 No one felt that more clearly than Constance ; but it 
 was not hers, and she had long ago given up trying to 
 export herself to the solar systems of others, or fancying 
 that any one could be imported into hers. If hers was 
 the brighter sun perhaps it was not, but she enjoyed its 
 action upon her so much that she ventured to believe it 
 very bright she felt that the fact implied a duty upon 
 her part toward those who did not live in its rays, and 
 she held herself constantly ready to get out of the light, 
 and to let them bask in its radiance as long as they 
 would. But she knew better than to suppose that they 
 would accept it as a better sun than theirs, or that they 
 could if they would. And upon her part she acknowl 
 edged the same incapacity as to other suns. 
 
 The daughter of the physician of the settlement, she 
 knew more or less intimately every inhabitant of it. But 
 they did not understand her, nor perhaps wholly trust 
 her in the matter of her attitude respecting the Church, 
 and she, though in sympathy with their general purpose 
 she was, of course, heartily for any thing that made 
 toward good was unable to like all the methods by 
 which they sought to accomplish it. For the people 
 themselves she had the kindest regard ; but this consisted
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 6 1 
 
 with a certain unfriendliness toward their theory of life. 
 They were good and noble and fine ; they gave her in a 
 way pure delight, and were constantly teaching her to 
 take shame to herself that she was so far below them in 
 all that was finally worth while, but and she gave the 
 " but " a feeling stress she did not know how to sustain 
 long conversations with them. They had not her interests, 
 or rather for she invariably owned that the fault was 
 hers she had not theirs. 
 
 To all this Sister Zelda was in some degree an excep 
 tion. Like Constance herself, she had been educated 
 outside the faith, and had memories of a rebellious time 
 when she too observed Moravianism with the critical eye, 
 from without. She had come, however, to look at it in 
 the one fair way of looking at things from within, or as 
 if one were within and she found it now so satisfying 
 that she longed to repeat her experience in Constance. 
 They were accustomed to hold many interesting talks 
 together. Since March's coming these talks had been 
 fewer, and it was with a feeling that she had been neg 
 lecting her a little that Constance, two days after her con 
 versation with Mr. Keator, took her way to the Widows' 
 Choir House, in which Sister Zelda had her home. 
 
 She entered the arched doorway of a large stone build 
 ing in the midst of a group of like structures, and went 
 along the hallway paved with the bricks which the breth 
 ren had made for themselves in the early days of the set 
 tlement. Between the lines of doors, on either side the 
 passage, stood the cupboards in which the sisters kept 
 their unluxurious dainties stored. The moons above the 
 two high clocks set in diagonal corners were winking at 
 each other over the big German stove between them. 
 The bricks were extraordinarily clean, and so was all the
 
 62 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 wood-work. The balustrade of the staircase, leading 
 above, shone with a glister like silk. There was a con 
 science in the turn of the coverlids on the prim white 
 beds, which Constance's glance included familiarly as she 
 passed the occasional open doors. On the threshold at 
 the end of the hallway, a cat lay sleeping in the sun ; and 
 looking out beyond, Constance saw that most of the sis 
 ters were at work in their garden. The sight reproached 
 her abandonment of her own garden in this precious 
 seed-time ; but Sister Zelda raised her well-made little 
 figure from a bed of sweet-william at the moment, and 
 she remembered her errand. The Moravian caught sight 
 of her visitor at once, and came toward her, smiling. 
 
 "Is it me you have come to see, Sister Constance ?" 
 She took her hand. 
 
 " Do I come to see any one else ? " 
 
 " Alas ! no. I wish you might." 
 
 " Ah, well, that is an old question, Sister Zelda, and I 
 have a new one for you to-day. We shan't need the 
 weeds, shall we ? " She pointed, smiling, to the green 
 bunch in the sister's hand. 
 
 Sister Zelda threw them down with a restrained laugh, 
 and dusted her hands, gloved in studiously darned lisle 
 thread. 
 
 " I am not sorry to leave the weeds ; my back is sore, 
 I may tell you, with stooping." She gave her matronly 
 head a faint shake, and tightened her white cap strings. 
 As the absent minded pinch themselves to remember that 
 they are praying, she reminded herself in this way that 
 she was talking too much of herself ; and she began at 
 once to ask Constance about her welfare. 
 
 " I hope you have been well, dear. It is more than a 
 week since we met."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 63 
 
 " My body has been briskly, thank you but my 
 thoughts, Sister Zelda I've come to talk with you about 
 my thoughts." 
 
 The elder woman led her caller into her neat chamber, 
 plainly furnished and uncarpeted, but bright, with its own 
 shining cleanliness, and taking color and warmth from its 
 prosperous window garden. 
 
 " I am fearful that I know what concerns you," she 
 said, as she seated Constance in the single rocker, and 
 stood behind it holding the knobs at the top tightly, and 
 glancing at the girl's side-face with compassion. 
 
 " Come here before me, won't you, Sister Zelda. ? I 
 want to speal? to you about it all the more if you know." 
 She half turned her head and gave her companion a 
 furtive upward glance ; but the sister kept her hands on 
 the knobs and turned her face away. 
 
 " It is hardly so bad as that, Sister Zelda. You need 
 not hesitate to talk of it with me. I am rebellious, of 
 course, but I don't mean to discuss the right of the elders 
 to send such a message to me it is that you have heard 
 about, I suppose, though I can't fancy how. I am only 
 curious to know how much further they can go." 
 
 Sister Zelda took down her nearest hand and put it in 
 Constance's. She did not change her position. 
 
 " The Church has its laws. But you need not to vex 
 yourself with them, Constance. Laws are made for those 
 who break them is not that it ? " 
 
 " But suppose / break them ? " 
 
 "You will not ! " cried her companion. 
 
 " 1 don't know. I shan't imprison myself in them." 
 
 " Surely you will heed the elders ! " Sister Zelda came 
 before the young girl and looked anxiously down into the 
 calm eyes turned up to her. 
 5
 
 64 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " It depends upon what they ask. I don't mean to be 
 unreasonable, but they must not be." 
 
 " My dear, my dear ! I had hoped you were nearer 
 the Church than that. If you were really one of us, as I 
 have liked to think, you would bear this yoke so easily ! 
 I know you see it all from outside. In that light every 
 rule is a bond. I remember when to me it seemed so. 
 But really, dear, it is a guide only a guide. Try to 
 think humbly of it in that way." 
 
 The mysterious serenity wrought by twenty years' holy 
 living was in the sister's face. The effluence of her mild, 
 sweet presence was like a patient reproach of all pride 
 and self-will and wrong-doing. Her words, Constance 
 felt, added nothing to it ; and when the girl glanced at 
 her white cap-strings, she felt a fleeting loathing for 
 the life of which those colorless widow's ribbons made so 
 little, and of which she was making so much. 
 
 Yet, she said, as a fresh resentment of the elders' 
 encroachment and her impatience of walking in an alley 
 way of rules swept over her, " I'm afraid you can't reform 
 me, Sister Zelda. I wasn't bred with the ideas which 
 what you have urged, and may I say it ? your life, 
 seem to make so grateful. It is a misfortune, since I am 
 to live among those who were reared under them, espe 
 cially in my relation to father. I assure you, if I could 
 make those ideas mine by wishing, I should have been a 
 good Moravian long ago, for his sake. What I am anx 
 ious to know is very simple. The elders have bidden me 
 use Mr. March less cordially. I do not mean to do it. 
 What will be the result ? " 
 
 " My child ! you will be called before the elders ! " 
 
 " Please don't think that the consequence will make a 
 difference. I shall do what seems right. I only wish to 
 be prepared."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 65 
 
 Sister Zelda left her side and went sadly to the window, 
 where she took up a pair of small scissors which she 
 kept there, and began to cut back a small geranium as if 
 though it was early Spring it were to go to the cellar 
 for the Winter. She breathed a heavy sigh. 
 
 " You are in love with him." 
 
 Constance started up. 
 
 " You will go away with him. We shall lose you." 
 She took a handkerchief of coarse linen from her pocket, 
 and unfolding it touched it softly to her eyes. 
 
 " Zelda !" cried Constance, coming up behind her, 
 " do you think that was like you ? Must I be moved 
 by something outside my sense of courtesy and right in 
 a matter like this, if I oppose myself to your system ? 
 You know me better than any one else in Judea except 
 father and Mr. Keator. Do you think I must be in love 
 with my father's guest to wish to treat him as becomes 
 the head of my father's household ? Ah, Sister Zelda, I 
 can't believe you do ! " 
 
 She took her by her shoulders with a caressing motion 
 not common with her. Sister Zelda turned reluctantly, 
 and smiled through her tears into the girl's eager eyes. 
 She thrust her handkerchief back into the wide-mouthed 
 pocket of her loose skirt. 
 
 " You feel that you are acting rightly. I know that. 
 It is not for me to take exception to your motives. What 
 I said ... it was my love for you that spoke," 
 concluded she, hastily, with a tremor in her voice. 
 
 " I am sure of that," exclaimed Constance, contritely, 
 as she led her to the seat she had herself just quitted. 
 She brought a cricket and sat beside her, keeping 
 silence, while Sister Zelda patted her hand and gained 
 control enough of her voice to say,
 
 66 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 11 1 know you do not care enough for yourself, Con 
 stance but for your father's sake, and for mine a bit, 
 if that does not seem like presuming for sometimes I 
 think you have a mite of liking for Sister Zelda surely 
 you will try not to offend the elders. Your father loves 
 the Church. It would be a sore cross to him if the 
 Church should be forced to reprove your ways openly." 
 
 " They would not dare ! " 
 
 " You do not know. We have many old laws. Our 
 people submit themselves. They are in little use." 
 
 " If you begin to hold terrors over me, I shall be sin 
 ning presently to prove that they are no terrors," laughed 
 Constance, half earnestly. 
 
 " Oh, my child, my child !" lamented Sister Zelda, " I 
 wish to lead you ever so gently, and after all it is as if I 
 tried to drive you. I do not understand you. I shall 
 do you no good. Let us talk of somewhat else." 
 
 Constance gave a little sigh, and rising, walked over 
 and pretended to examine her companion's plants, while 
 she asked her some questions about them ; and soon she 
 remembered that her own plants awaited her out-of-doors, 
 and that she must bring her visit to an end. Sister 
 Zelda let her go wistfully. She did not revert to the 
 topic they had left, though her love and her fears cried 
 for one final word. 
 
 Mr. Keator did not again visit the house for several 
 days, but when he came at length Constance's reception 
 of him would not have indicated that he held a place in 
 the foreground of her thoughts. The simple presbyter 
 helplessly recognized past happenings by the mere 
 manner of taking her hand. He glanced shyly at her 
 with an uncertain smile, and hastily took a seat beside 
 her father and began the discussion of some temporal
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 67 
 
 affairs of the community. Constance continued her talk 
 with March by the window. 
 
 After this Mr. Keator was seen as often as usual at 
 Dr. Van Cleef's residence, and in the botanical talks 
 which he constantly held with his host made an effort 
 not to see that Constance avoided tete-a-tetes with him. 
 Botany was a bond of sympathy between the two men, 
 and the firmness of this passionless form of attachment 
 is notorious. Mr. Keator's branch was not Dr. Van 
 Cleef's ; he did not cultivate a large horticultural gar 
 den. He observed the habits, the forms, the scheme of 
 life of common plants, and this only required a modest 
 greenhouse. But his love of the science was as lusty 
 as his friend's ; and care and study of his botanical 
 library, and the herbarium stored beneath his book 
 shelves, occupied the larger portion of the rare hours 
 that he allowed himself to snatch from his profession. 
 
 In naming a flower plucked on his woodland walks 
 he often spent several weeks. The addition of a new 
 specimen to the voluminous herbarium, in which he 
 aimed to include the entire range of plant life in the 
 region about, was a keen satisfaction. He found pleas 
 ure in watching the large collection grow larger, in 
 smoothing the regular green outlines of a freshly found 
 plant on its background of clear white paper, in carefully 
 pressing it between the sheets of pasteboard, in tracing 
 its genus, species, and the like, on the cover in his small, 
 perfect hand. The close-set shelves, arranged as a 
 depository for these precious volumes, ran about the four 
 sides of his library beneath the books ; and the neat, 
 thin quartos, between whose sides the fading plants 
 slept, seemed to have no quarrel with any but the sour 
 est of the theologians above. " We are part of nature,"
 
 68 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 they might have been fancied to say ; " if you also are, 
 very well ! If not, so much the worse for you." 
 
 Into this library March found himself often straying, 
 as his acquaintance with its owner ripened. The min 
 ister was an Englishman, and it chanced that, his mother 
 being of German birth, part of his education had been 
 gained at Heidelberg. The early years of his ministry had 
 been passed in the mother country, and he had been 
 sent to America because of his command of the ; t\vo 
 languages needful in this field German and English ; 
 an Englishman who spoke excellent German being 
 thought, on the whole, as well adapted to the work as a 
 German who knew no English. March had many agree 
 able reminiscent talks with him about England and 
 Heidelberg. They had not been at Heidelberg to 
 gether, but English-speaking students were rarer at the 
 German university at that time than now, and a common 
 experience of the kind was a more valid reason for fel 
 lowship than it might now be regarded. 
 
 Mr. Keator impressed March as a singularly fine- 
 fibred and charming spirit. In some ways he was 
 thoroughly unlike the people over whom he had been 
 set. His infirmity, which hindered him in no good 
 work, and as to which he was at once touchingly intelli 
 gent and finely unconscious, was in itself a commenda 
 tion to liking. For the clergyman's part, he was 
 extremely courteous to the young man. He invited him 
 to make use of his library, which was rich in certain 
 volumes that March found useful in his investigations 
 regarding the country he had come to explore. The 
 young man when he came was made unaffectedly wel 
 come ; if Mr. Keator was at work, the minister merely 
 gave him his cordial greeting and went on ; and when,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 69 
 
 as occasionally happened, he came in and found March 
 engaged, he left him to his studies. 
 
 A feeling of good comradeship rose between them, to 
 which the members of the family of March's entertainer 
 were singularly unrelated. In the conversations of the 
 two they were seldom mentioned. Discussing the larger 
 subjects in rambling, unheated fashion, March received 
 a series of mild shocks in becoming acquainted with 
 certain opinions of his interlocutor which went perilously 
 near the root of things. Some of these did not appear, 
 at first thought, part of the natural equipment of a 
 Moravian presbyter, and they were at least astonishing 
 as specimens of the mental furniture of a gentle spirit. 
 But nearer acquaintance reconciled many things, and 
 March presently perceived that the ideas which had 
 seemed idiosyncrasies were in fact the necessary corol 
 laries of the simple faith by which he lived. Mr. Keator 
 was merely that being dear to the angels, if in little 
 repute among mortals, a perfectly impractical man. His 
 clear vision distinguished Right through whatever fog 
 of Wrong with a certainty which rendered him impatient 
 of the means for lifting the fog. That noble dream of 
 binding the thousand differing sects in one vast Church 
 was, for instance, very dear to him. He looked forward 
 to the abolition of slavery the world over, and there 
 would certainly have been a tremendous rattling of shack 
 les if he had been born, let us say, the Czar of Russia. 
 
 Fortunately his theories led him to no aggressive acts. 
 As a Moravian he was opposed to wars, and March was 
 confident that he would grieve for the accomplishment 
 of the fondest of his large-hearted wishes if achieved by 
 force of arms. He might indeed head a missionary 
 army ; but its methods would be unsanguinary.
 
 70 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 March saw much of Mr. Keator, but he did not see 
 less of Constance ; and once or twice, as they came 
 into the house after a morning spent in the garden or 
 upon a long drive, it occurred to him that these were the 
 conditions under which wooings went on. It did not 
 follow that he should arraign himself for this. He was, 
 for the most part, not a man of anxious scrutinies, and 
 the ring of sentiment was the last which he was likely to 
 test over-curiously. He felt no obligation to ask him 
 self whether he was in love with the girl who caused him 
 to pass so many agreeable hours.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE shadow of Winter which had lingered on the 
 sulky clouds slowly passed at the sun's bright nods, and 
 the reluctant foliage by imperceptible motions dressed 
 the trees and shrubs. But toward the middle of April 
 came one perfect day. The sun gallantly made satisfac 
 tion for all past failings, and shone upon the sleeping 
 earth as if it were never to shine again. A new fra 
 grance rose from the steaming soil. Out in the fields 
 the broad hats of the brethren again knew their proper 
 use as shades, and as they followed the plough, rolling 
 up the fat soil in long moist lips, their rejoicing chorales 
 came softened to the ear of the settlement through the 
 sunlit air. The sleek oxen, pausing at the end of the 
 furrows, raised their mild eyes and lowed with sturdy 
 liking toward the wide blue. In the orchards the magic 
 warmth touched the tardy buds and straightway they 
 were blossoms, while any one could see the leaves unfold 
 ing to the clear, sweet air. The slandered northern 
 Spring moves slowly ; she hangs shyly back as any 
 maiden should, she coquets with the earth, she pouts, 
 she is full of whimsey ; but when she comes she comes 
 royally. 
 
 Dr. Van Cleef's garden leaped forward under the 
 amiable impulse. The lilac bushes under the side win- 
 clows, which had only waited a little encouragement, 
 flowered within the day, and the jonquils took heart and
 
 72 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 held up their heads with a consciousness of propriety in 
 their presence under such a sky. From every quarter of 
 the garden rose a cloud of perfume which the sense 
 presently discriminated as the incomparable odor of the 
 violet. The breeze brought from the fields the nameless 
 earth smell, mingled with the faint scent of apple-blos 
 soms. Every shrub felt the indubitable Spring in its 
 veins and did honor to it. The rose-buds swelled joy 
 fully. Dr. Van Cleef bade adieu to solicitude touching 
 late frosts, and superintended the transplanting of the 
 sheltered greenhouse blossoms to open beds. There 
 was a new brightness in the fine garden when the flam 
 ing geraniums, the fuchsias, the begonias, and the rest, 
 once more rose from their "native soil and saluted the 
 weather. The doctor made few professional visits, but 
 went about with a happy smile, carrying a small pair of 
 pruning shears, with which he corrected from time to 
 time impertinent growths. The robins and bobolinks 
 flew across his path, and, perching confidently on the 
 neighboring shrubs, chirped their inebriate glee in the 
 old man's face. 
 
 The days which followed seemed less admirable only 
 because less novel. One ceased to think of the weather, 
 as there was clearly nothing left to wish, and from such 
 suave skies only an obstinate cynic could have expected 
 any thing but the most lady-like behavior. It was plain, 
 not only that the Spring had come, but that she had been 
 confirmed in her urbanity and had nothing to retract. 
 The school boys, whom March had heard at intervals, 
 in colder weather, clamoring mildly on their play-ground, 
 let loose their voices now in the sunshine with a hearti 
 ness quite without propriety, but which the masters, sym 
 pathizing perhaps with their joy, did not appear to feel
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 73 
 
 it their duty to repress. Giant kites floated in battalions, 
 isolated to the eye from earth and clouds, and the long 
 street became the field of critical skirmishes at Prisoner's 
 Base. In the late afternoons these merry youngsters, 
 whom no error of costume could age, came from the 
 woods laden with sassafras and sweet flag and other 
 objects of boyish search, chanting in raucous soprano 
 the hymns of their choir. The older girls, too, as Easter 
 approached, might be seen, clad in the simple dress and 
 modest cap, returning to the settlement with baskets of 
 trailing arbutus, hepatica and dog tooth violets for the 
 decoration of their choir houses and the great congrega 
 tion house ; and as their full, sweet voices rose in their 
 virginal chants, beseeching the Bridegroom of the 
 Church to grant them purity of heart and that peace 
 which passeth all understanding, March felt, as he list 
 ened from the green depths of the garden, or sometimes 
 stood aside on the street to let them pass, that the 
 prayer was needless. Certainly here was an exquisitely 
 pure and lofty faith, one in which one might live calmly 
 and die strongly. 
 
 In this friendly view he was much strengthened by 
 acquaintance with certain of the brethren. March 
 found himself liking them greatly, and in much the same 
 way and for the same reasons that he liked men in the 
 world. Indeed it was only in some little tricks of speech 
 and dress that they enforced the difference, and though 
 they could not entirely cloak in their conversation the 
 broad charity, the serene faith, the intimate walk with 
 God, which were the essentials of their creed, they never 
 insisted upon them, and one learned from long acquaint 
 ance only, the perfect manliness, the noble simplicity of 
 their lives. They were not only admirable Christians ;
 
 74 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 they were after their lights as March told himself with 
 a perception of the humor of the phrase as applied to 
 them, yet with a sense of its absolute truth chivalrous 
 gentlemen. In other words, they met him in a measure 
 on his own ground ; they spoke the universal language 
 of courtesy. It is true that they used it a little shyly 
 not as an unfamiliar tongue, but as if with a fear that their 
 accent might not in every respect correspond to his but 
 March found springing up between them and him, a kind 
 of fraternity which ,was altogether pleasant. 
 
 " You will be one of us mayhap yet. Brother March," 
 ventured one of the younger brethren to him, as they 
 came out of the church together one afternoon. " You 
 admire our faith. You say you like the life. We shall 
 look to see you join us some day." 
 
 The young man smiled that waiting smile with which 
 the deaf sometimes deprecate the answer they may fail 
 to hear. 
 
 " It is not likely, I fear, Conrad. The old Adam is a 
 little strong in me still. You could hardly receive me 
 consistently, and I certainly couldn't come to you with 
 any kind of conscience," smiled March. " Besides, the 
 world calls me yet. Moravianism is not for the young, 
 I'm afraid, Conrad. When I'm older, I can't say. I might 
 be glad of such a rescue from the world's troubles as 
 you offer." 
 
 " That is what they all tell us," returned Conrad Hied, 
 with a deaf man's precise speech. " But we can hardly 
 be expected to see it so. Moravianism is for every one ; 
 that is what we say." 
 
 " Ah, it is not for me! " 
 
 " Nay, you may feel some time that it is. But we do 
 not seek converts we wish no one who does not feel a
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 75 
 
 call. If you should ever feel the call, Brother March," 
 pursued he, with his kindly smile, " we are here." 
 
 March was unconscious how importantly his association 
 with Constance affected her. He could scarcely imagine 
 that it touched her relation to the Church; and even the 
 Moravians who knew him best were loth to tell him. 
 Of Mr. Keator's warning to her none but the elders 
 and the eldresses were definitely informed, but the 
 ungossiping, charitable community had its thoughts ; and 
 its members were of course perfectly acquainted with 
 the usual discipline in such cases, though it was seldom 
 used. 
 
 In what may consist the indefinable quality of hearti 
 ness of manner, the lack of which pains us in friends 
 and sets us agrate with acquaintances, is not so clear as 
 the fact of its presence or absence. As to that no one 
 can mistake. It is merely in the air, but the sense of it 
 reaches us without putting it to the trouble, like carbonic 
 acid gas, of giving us a headache; and yet we are usually 
 glad to wait until the headache proves us right. March 
 began to fancy that he felt the want of this vital con 
 stituent of breathable social air. But though he was 
 confident that something was missing from the former 
 cordial bearing toward him of the people of the settle 
 ment, the wanting thing was so impalpable that he was 
 willing to believe he might be wrong, and he said to 
 himself carelessly that at all events, if it existed, it might 
 come to him, for he had no idea of going to it. If Dr. 
 Van Cleef, whose long absence from his people had 
 given him time to grow forgetful about their customs 
 perhaps even unconsciously careless in pursuance of the 
 strict letter of them experienced any thing of the same 
 sort, it did not visibly trouble him ; and he would certainly
 
 7 6 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 have been at a loss to find reason for it, since knowledge 
 of the proceedings of the elders had been kept from him 
 by Mr. Keator's wish. 
 
 Constance would have been annoyed if she had 
 observed that March was less well seen in the community 
 whose members he had appeared to like so well ; yet, as 
 she would not have treated him differently to win the 
 good-will of ten times the number of persons in Judea 
 for herself, she would not have done more to gain it for 
 him. She was assured that her course was right not 
 for Eugenia or Florence or Philomena, perhaps, but dis 
 tinctly right for Constance ; and nothing save possibly 
 her father's wish could have caused her to move from 
 it. It was certainly a bitter trial of her resolution when, 
 within a week of her visit to Sister Zelda, she was called 
 quietly before several of the elders and gently questioned 
 and admonished. She was only a girl , and though it was 
 all done with as much care for her feelings as was con 
 sistent with their duty, it was the cruelest ordeal through 
 which she had ever passed. She remembered it as a 
 nightmare ; and she never met afterward one of the elders 
 who had put to her in a kindly voice what she felt to 
 be odious questions, without a shudder. Her arraign 
 ment had probed her heart, but she remembered proudly 
 that they had not been suffered to know that. For she 
 had not answered their questions, and the tremor had 
 lain silent in her throat, not shaming her in her voice. 
 
 The occurrence did not cause her to change her course; 
 and this was not altogether because the spirit of com 
 bative pride which spurs us all at times to do foolish 
 things, out of mere opposition, was aroused. She bore 
 herself toward March as she had borne herself prior to 
 Mr. Keator's warning and the elders' admonition,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 77 
 
 because if it was right to treat him with what seemed to 
 her the courtesy due her father's guest then, it was not 
 less right now. She had promised Mr. Keator, and she 
 endeavored to make their association as little public as 
 possible ; but save for this concession she kept calmly 
 on her way not obstinately ; she hoped not vainglo- 
 riously or in self-will. 
 
 And March did not know. 
 
 He had begun to think that he must go. Lincoln 
 wrote that he was unexpectedly detained by business, 
 and was not to be looked for within the week ; but 
 March not unwillingly permitted one thing and another 
 to detain him for a day or two, and presently Dr. Van 
 Cleef fell ill. Dr. Click, who took his senior's place 
 with his patients and consulted with him upon his own 
 treatment, seemed not to think it a serious matter. Dr. 
 Van Cleef had suffered other such attacks, though pos 
 sibly none so severe. It would, nevertheless, be discourt 
 eous to leave, and March remained, assisting as he might. 
 Constance's acquaintance with these assaults was of 
 long standing, and she had learned the wisdom of that 
 instructed sympathy which is content to leave its object 
 largely to the operation of quiet and proper medicines. 
 She was apparently not alarmed. March was, therefore, 
 offered freer rather than more limited opportunities of 
 seeing her, and he improved them with proper gallantry. 
 Her gardening, an employment which occupied many of 
 her hours at this season, he usually found time to be 
 present at. 
 
 " What is it to-day ? " enquired he, as Constance 
 emerged from the tool-house at the lower end of the 
 garden on a certain afternoon. She was tying on an 
 ample apron, and carried a trowel in her hand.
 
 73 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Roses. The lesson this afternoon will be in trans 
 planting," said she, smiling, as she gave the strings of 
 the apron a smart tug. 
 
 " It's very good of you to let me be present at the 
 demonstration." 
 
 " That is not the Moravian idea," returned Constance, 
 cutting with her trowel an opening in the soil for a rose. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! " 
 
 " I say that is not the Moravian way of looking at it," 
 repeated Constance, smoothing the earth thoughtfully 
 about her plant. Her manner toward March, as has 
 been said, was not changed. Having imagined a part, 
 she was capable of supporting it to the ultimate point of 
 vraisemblance, and she had determined, with a generous 
 impulse of reparation for the affront, which Mr. March 
 could not know, that he should guess nothing of it from 
 her bearing. Upon her conversation, however, as apart 
 from her manner, she could not always keep absolute 
 watch, and these words had slipped from her unawares. 
 
 " I don't know," said March, at length. " You have 
 an intricate system, though your fundamental theory is 
 so simple. But I don't believe the Moravian notion of 
 courtesy differs greatly from the generally received one, 
 does it ? " 
 
 " I can't tell you. Yes it does in some ways." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 She glanced hesitatingly at him. " Why, it's not in 
 what one would call courtesy, exactly, that they differ 
 certainly they would not name it so. It is a part of their 
 system part of their theory, as you call it." 
 
 " You say they ? " 
 
 " They ? What do you mean, Mr. March ? " 
 
 " You speak as if they were somehow separate. You
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 79 
 
 are one of them, are you not ? Surely you profess their 
 faith ? " 
 
 " I ! " cried Constance, turning upon her trowel as she 
 set it in the path. " I scarcely understand. / a Mora 
 vian." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 She bent her lustrous eyes upon him. "You don't 
 think me a Moravian, Mr. March ? " 
 
 " Surely." 
 
 " Why, no ! " exclaimed she, with a little wondering 
 smile, rising with the trowel in her hand. "No ! How 
 could you think ? " 
 
 His glance guided her to her costume. " Ah ! my 
 dress ! Of course. How stupid of me ! But you didn't 
 suppose that means any thing." March confessed to this 
 innocence. " Why that that I wear for my father," she 
 told him seriously. 
 
 " But he surely he is a member of their Church ? " 
 
 " Of course ! You didn't imagine ? Oh, you are 
 very badly tangled, Mr. March." 
 
 " I shall be glad if you will unravel me," said he. 
 
 " Why, let me tell you," began the girl, seating herself 
 on the stout monument of a recently felled tree, and 
 balancing the point of the trowel on her knee. She 
 recited the facts of her father's life as March already 
 knew them from Lincoln. 
 
 " My father married in New York, and out of his faith, 
 of course. My mother was not a Moravian," concluded 
 she. 
 
 " But you ? . . . Pardon me ! " 
 
 " Ah, you must tell me," cried the girl, sadly. 
 
 " I fear I am prejudiced." 
 
 " Perhaps," she answered, absently. Then continuing 
 6
 
 8o A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " When my mother was dying she begged father to come 
 back here ; she knew that his future happiness must be 
 among his own people. And so it has been. Consider 
 ing the extent of his offense, in their view, they received 
 him they received us, very kindly. My father pur 
 chased this place, and you see his life. About their little 
 rules and observances he is more liberal, I think, for 
 having been of the world so long ; but, in the main, Mr. 
 Keator, himself, is not a more zealous Moravian. He 
 loves the Church, though he broke away from it in his 
 youth for a broader field, and in his old age the life here 
 has become very dear to him. He is not expected to 
 practice outside the settlement, you know ; but as he is 
 not allowed to receive fees, they often call upon him 
 from the country about, and he always goes. He is very 
 happy in it all. At least why, it has pained him, of 
 course, that I am not of his faith." 
 
 " But outwardly ? " 
 
 " I wear the dress, as you say," returned she, with a 
 deeper melancholy, possibly, than she knew, " and some 
 times I go to their church. I am even enrolled, I believe, 
 as a probationary member of the congregation," con 
 tinued she, with apathy. " But my heart is not in it. I 
 have tried, oh, I have tried ! " she exclaimed, with sudden 
 energy, and tears came into her eyes. " But I can't, I 
 can't. Every thing in me revolts against it ! " 
 
 " It seems a very pure and beautiful faith," depre 
 cated March. 
 
 " Oh, I know that so well ! " cried Constance, wearily. 
 " I have told myself that very often. It is a capital 
 refuge, is it not ? But I don't want a refuge. I want 
 to live ! I should like to see, to do, to be ! " exclaimed 
 she, rapturously. " I want to plunge into the midst of
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 8 1 
 
 things, not to shelter myself from them. Some time I 
 might find this life the sweetest thing in the world. But 
 now ah ! I long for experience ! " breathed the girl, 
 with sparkling eyes. 
 
 The pretty white coif looked hopelessly irrelevant ; the 
 plain gray gown silently protested against these auda 
 cious sentiments. 
 
 " Experience sometimes bruises. It is often cruel," 
 ventured her companion. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. March, do you say that to the young sol 
 dier ? Do you talk to him of wounds ? Do you fancy 
 he cares for them ? He looks forward to action, to glory. 
 He does not think of death," pursued she, with sympa 
 thetic scorn. 
 
 " I don't know. If he is wise, he looks over the 
 ground, he takes things into consideration. " 
 
 Constance glanced at him speculatively. 
 
 " You don't believe that, Mr. March. I am sure you 
 don't ! " 
 
 " But if it is true ! " 
 
 " Then I don't want to be wise. I want to be delight 
 fully foolish," averred she, with joyous emphasis. " One 
 can't look forward to a lifetime of this." She glanced 
 with dislike at her dress and indicated the line of gro 
 tesque roofs just visible above the shrubbery. " One's 
 vow might bind one to verbal agreement that this village 
 is the world ; but it's not. One's mind has its own 
 geography, and even vows can't revise it." 
 
 She tapped her trowel thoughtfully upon the stump. 
 
 " Of course, I sympathize with you," said March, 
 earnestly. " But you must see, that though you may be 
 in the right, all the conditions conspire to put you in the 
 wrong."
 
 82 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Oh, you don't like to aid and abet rebellion ! " cried 
 she. " It's quite right ; I feel so myself. I am on the 
 side of submission, however I may seem to contradict 
 it. I deplore my ideas. I feel with regret that I am a 
 rebel, and should like to suppress my insurrection. I 
 am constantly leading out armies against it ; but thus 
 far the rebel has the best of it. He appears to carry the 
 stronger guns." 
 
 " I think I should run up a flag of truce and hold a 
 parley," laughed March. 
 
 " I've tried that, but he has no respect for the laws of 
 war. He keeps on firing. Seriously, Mr. March, you 
 understand my situation. I would not leave my father, 
 of course, if a hundred gates stood open to the world I 
 long for. Yet I can not help wishing. We left New 
 York, you see, just as I began to go out a little. If I 
 had been brought here as a child I should have known 
 nothing else, and might have been content. But I have 
 had sight of the promised land, and I can not tell you 
 how I wish to go down into it." She paused with a 
 sad smile. " It seems wicked to be talking in this 
 way. Father is so good ; and we should be so very 
 happy if this wretched question of my faith and inten 
 tion could be put away from between us. He thinks 
 of it constantly, I know, though he will not urge me. 
 But his very silence is a reproach, and standing before 
 the two paths, I have drifted into one a little way from 
 sheer remorse and sorrow for his feeling." 
 
 " Why not go on in it ? It won't run directly to 
 the Elysian fields, I'm afraid, but but I am presum 
 ing" 
 
 " Oh, no. But you haven't lived for a long time 
 among these people, as I have. I remember that. It is
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 83 
 
 not strange that it seems so fine a thing to you. I 
 thought so at first. But nothing could be so perfect as 
 Moravianism appears. It is for the old." March remem 
 bered, self-accusingly, what he had said to Conrad. " It 
 has the quality of every faith that separates itself and 
 asks renunciation of the world. It is sweetest to 
 the world's victims, to the world's failures. You see, 
 I am neither yet, Mr. March," said she, smiling with 
 mournful humor. 
 
 " You would like an opportunity to be ? " 
 
 " I don't say that," she answered, slowly ; but I 
 should like freedom to take the world as it comes to 
 others. I can't accept the protection from it that these 
 good people they are very good, Mr. March ; don't 
 think I am blind to that could offer me. That is their 
 compensation ; they have given up the world, but the 
 world has surrendered its claim. They have escaped 
 its pains by renouncing its joys. That is very well ; I 
 only say that for me the reward is not high enough. I 
 am not sure that, even if I could make up my mind to 
 turn my back upon life, as you advise, I should be able 
 to conquer my feeling about certain things. Oh, you 
 don't know, Mr. March ! Think of the absurdity of 
 separating the sexes in a community which does not 
 forbid marriage. You can't fancy the stringency of their 
 rules." 
 
 " Perhaps not," said he, respectfully. 
 
 " You know that the young men and women seldom 
 encounter ; but can you imagine how all intercourse, 
 even the innocent play of children, is abolished ? Why, 
 Mr. March, if I were half as good a Moravian as you 
 thought me, do you suppose I could sit here and talk 
 with you ? "
 
 84 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " I why .... March started and flushed. " I 
 don't know. Why not ? " 
 
 " Ah, that you must ask the spirit of the master-mind 
 of the Church Count Zinzendorf," cried she, hastily, 
 with her eyes fixed on the tip of her boot. 
 
 She took up the trowel which she had laid by her side 
 and began to play with it uneasily. She was regretting 
 her impulsive question. 
 
 March stared at her, bewildered. 
 
 " I scarcely understand, Miss Van Cleef. Is this 
 what you meant when you said ? Have I been trans 
 gressing ? Is there ? Surely there can be no rule of 
 
 the settlement which prohibits innocent conversation." 
 
 Constance was pulling a rose to pieces with down 
 cast eyes. She made it an elaborate operation, survey 
 ing each petal critically before drawing it from the calyx, 
 as if it might after all be the particular petal which 
 ought not to be plucked. She did not look up as she 
 answered, at length, 
 
 " In in certain cases." 
 
 She cast away the naked calyx impatiently, and strove 
 to raise her eyes and confront his boldly, but a modest 
 seizure defeated this, and she hurriedly fixed her glance 
 on the hands she folded in her lap. 
 
 " I don't see, Miss Van Cleef," cried March, in a mys 
 tery. " I won't see. I should be afraid to believe what 
 you seem to say. If But it is impossible, it is mon 
 strous. Pray tell me what you mean," he begged, more 
 calmly. " You can certainly make it plain with a word. 
 Say that word, Miss Van Cleef. There can be no 
 offense ; yet I must ask you to to assure me that there 
 is none." He laughed painfully. " This is torturing. 
 Speak ! Say that I am a dastard, if you will. There
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 85 
 
 will be others to say it, if it is true. I may better hear it 
 from you." 
 
 " You must go to the others, Mr. March," answered 
 she, looking up at him with a brave smile. " You mis 
 construe ; you misunderstand," she told him, with sad 
 calm. " It is natural, but I can't explain," she went on, 
 drearily. " I can tell you that you have done nothing 
 unworthy of yourself. But I can not say anything to make 
 it clear. It is too bad to have vexed you. I ought not 
 to have spoken." 
 
 She ceased quietly, with a note of contrition, and March 
 regarded her for a moment, stupefied. 
 
 " That is very well, Miss Van Cleef," he said, rousing 
 himself at length. " I appreciate your feeling. But you 
 can hardly expect me to remain satisfied with no more 
 explanation." He rose suddenly. " I am going in 
 search of information," he announced. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't." 
 
 " I won't if you ask me not," he said, quickly. 
 
 She observed him questioningly for an instant, and 
 breathed a heavy sigh. Then she dropped her trowel 
 and turned from him on the stump with the glitter of 
 tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Pray, go ! " she cried, brokenly. 
 
 March glanced at her with compassion, and seemed 
 about to speak. But he abruptly turned from her and 
 went up the garden path with swift steps.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARCH went out into the street silently basking in the 
 afternoon sun, and, after a moment's hesitation, toward 
 the church and the choir houses. They stood massively 
 grouped at the end of the street with something the 
 appearance of a castle that had not attained its full 
 stature ; though turrets and flying buttresses, gargoyles 
 and other proper architectural adornments were abund 
 antly distributed, and, so far as they went, were genuine. 
 The stone pile faced North and West, and half enclosed 
 a species of court, in which was built a graceful little 
 chapel, used as a temporary resting-place for the dead 
 while awaiting burial in the beautiful plot beyond. 
 
 March's intention seemed to volatilize in the sun 
 light, for, having reached Mr. Keator's door, he surveyed 
 it thoughtfully for a moment, and turning quickly away, 
 walked back toward the paved approach to the court 
 which he had just passed. It was cool in the dense 
 shadow of the towering masonry as he went up the 
 walk at the rear of the choir houses, but out in the ceme 
 tery the low graves lay bright in the April warmth. 
 
 The burial plot was surrounded by a paling painted 
 a dazzling white. Ordinarily the gate was open, but 
 March found it securely padlocked. There were other 
 entrances, one of which was doubtless unfastened, but 
 the young man's mood at the moment was not patient of 
 hindrances, and, grasping two pickets firmly, he lifted 
 himself over with an agile impulse. It was an absurd
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 87 
 
 manner of entering a graveyard, he felt ; but the touch 
 of recklessness in the act was a vague relief to him. He 
 went swiftly along one of the paths, kicking restlessly at 
 the occasional twigs which had escaped the vigilant rakes 
 of the brethren. 
 
 The enclosure was called a cemetery, and this was cer 
 tainly its use, but the casual glance would have sup 
 posed it a scrupulously kept park. The evidences of its 
 real character were neither profuse nor obtrusive, and 
 one's feeling in alighting upon them would have been 
 rather a surprised pleasure than the unreasoning chill that 
 commonly shames one in the presence of like emblems. 
 The slabs of slate lay above the graves, instead of stand 
 ing to proclaim their presence, and the inscriptions upon 
 them were meagre. Dense growths of thyme all but hid 
 these modest records of good lives ; but nothing else 
 was allowed to grow densely. The trees and shrubs 
 were lopped back, and the sunshine was everywhere. The 
 low paling did not emphasize the limits of the ground. 
 There is no reason to suppose that there was a willow in 
 the enclosure ; and one trusted the affirmation that the 
 birds gathered more thickly here than elsewhere was 
 something better than an engaging legend. In this 
 pretty park much of the village leisure was spent. The 
 housewives passed their infrequent vacant hours 
 knitting and gossiping upon the numerous benches. 
 They brought their children too, and let them play in the 
 paths. No one who came to the place thought it need 
 ful to bring a gloomy mood with him ; and this was 
 both because the enclosure was so little like a burial 
 plot, and because the Moravians harbor no mean and 
 craven thought of death. Death to them is in the nature 
 of a joyful culmination of years of placid preparing yet
 
 88 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 not as an escape from life, which to their sense is a 
 felicitous and grateful season, a long opportunity of 
 gladness. 
 
 March found the cemetery deserted. He seated him 
 self on one of the benches and remained for some time 
 gazing rather vengefully into vacancy. It was obvious 
 that he had been guilty of an offence, an indiscretion, a 
 mistake what one would ; but the nature of it was by 
 no means so clear. Whatever its character, it was 
 unfortunately certain that it touched Miss Van Cleef. 
 He reflected that he might have gone away unconsciously 
 stained by it ; and he was properly grateful for the acci 
 dent which had kept him. There were doubtless numer 
 ous persons who might resolve his difficulty ; indeed 
 that might prove the least tolerable feature of his posi 
 tion. Possibly the very boys held the key ; all the 
 society might have been looking on at his stupidity 
 wondering, waiting for him to learn his error. March 
 felt like a blind man who has been suffered to walk 
 steadily on toward an obstruction without warning from 
 the gaping bystanders. He stared aimlessly at a young 
 flowering shrub before him, which would be a gay point 
 of color later, but now was only beginning to feel the 
 amiable Spring in its juices, and doubtfully decorating 
 itself with green, and wished he knew some one who 
 could and would tell him all he wanted to know. 
 
 A figure entered at one of the gates and passed 
 spectrally before his preoccupied vision. As he went by, 
 on a path beyond, March recognized him. He called his 
 name, and Conrad Hied, turning with his ready smile, 
 perceived him, and picking his way between the graves 
 came over and stood before him. 
 
 " You have been drawn here, also, Brother March ?
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 89 
 
 We all love the cemetery, but we would suppose you 
 might find it lonely. Some do not have our thoughts of 
 death, you know," apologized the young brother. 
 
 " Conrad," said March, irrelevantly, " I want to ask 
 you something ; or rather," smiled he, self-convictingly, 
 " I want to know something which I don't greatly want 
 to ask you." 
 
 " It will be very pleasing 
 
 " Sit down with me for a moment, Conrad. Tell me 
 plainly " said he, sitting erect and turning toward him 
 on the bench, " I know you hedge the relations of your 
 brethren and sisters in a general way but do you pro 
 hibit all intercourse ? frankly, do you forbid conversa 
 tion between them ? " 
 
 Conrad blushed painfully. 
 
 " Not not exactly as you may say forbid we do not 
 encourage it." 
 
 " If you, as a postulant an intending priest of your 
 Church were to see an unmarried brother and sister 
 pause in the street below there to speak to each other, 
 what would you think your duty ? " 
 
 " I do not know," answered Conrad, doubtfully. " You 
 put hard questions." 
 
 " Oh, well, I don't look for soft answers, Conrad. I 
 am merely engaged in a little hunt for truth. Let me 
 make it easier for you : suppose you saw them repeat 
 such an action ? " 
 
 " I should feel it right to speak to Mr. Keator of it," 
 replied the young man. 
 
 " The rule seems clear, at all events," said March. 
 
 " It is not what you could call a rule not that 
 exactly," returned Conrad, hastening his slow speech ; 
 " it is a custom."
 
 90 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT 
 
 "With the force of a rule." 
 
 " Rule ? " inquired Conrad, straining to hear. " We 
 have not any rule but love," said he, quaintly. 
 
 " One would say rather that you have every rule but 
 love." 
 
 Conrad scrutinized his companion's face in distress. 
 
 " I mean nothing to the discredit of your people," 
 said March. " I intend to say that your customs do 
 not encourage marriage." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Conrad, his round, deep-set eyes 
 brightening with comprehension. "But we wish to 
 encourage marriage." 
 
 " By keeping a high wall between your men and 
 women ? " 
 
 " Is it possible that you do not know, Brother March ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Our mode of forming what the world calls ' engage 
 ments.' ' 
 
 " I think I should like to know, Conrad," said March, 
 with a note of deeper seriousness in his voice ; and 
 rising nervously, he stood in the gravel path confront 
 ing the young brother. 
 
 "Our marriages are made by lot," said Conrad, look 
 ing up at him anxiously from his lower height. " I 
 thought you knew that." 
 
 " By lot ? Do you mean ? Why, what do you mean, 
 Conrad ? " cried March, stupidly. 
 
 Conrad put his hand to his ear. 
 
 " Lot ? Yes, lot. It seems as if it was quite simple 
 to us. We have known it so long, perhaps. When one 
 of the brethren wishes to marry, the Eldress of the Sin 
 gle Sisters' Choir presents a list to the Conference. The 
 lot tells us which sister our Lord wills to be his wife ; or
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 91 
 
 if the brother should feel a preference the lot is first tried 
 for the sister that he names. That is all." 
 
 " That is a great deal," commented March, briefly. 
 
 " Yes, it seems strange to you, Brother March, I sup 
 pose," said Conrad, regarding him with a questioning 
 smile. " It is very dear to us to most of us. Some 
 times the young people find it hard ; but in the end they 
 most always bear the yoke without much complaint. It 
 is their training, I should guess. We are taught to sub 
 mit ourselves from the first, and it conies easy after 
 awhile. If their wishes stand in the way of our Saviour's 
 will, they generally feel it a privilege to subdue them. 
 They are not forced to, of course, but they feel it a call a 
 direct call, as you might say ; and they mostly obey." 
 
 " But the two do not know each other. It is like a 
 royal marriage or a Turkish marriage." 
 
 " That may be ; I do not know about them. But the 
 folks concerned belong to the same society ; they do 
 not differ much in their feelings. As to their knowing 
 each other, it is true that we can not countenance that ; 
 but I have heard," continued Conrad, quizzically, "that 
 even in the world folks mostly do not know those they 
 marry. They know their husks, as you might say. And 
 our brethren and sisters know that ; they see each other 
 in church. But summering and wintering, as the saying 
 is : that is the only sure test." 
 
 Conrad rose and stood beside his companion with his 
 instant smile. 
 
 " They tell us so," returned March, glancing medita 
 tively at the involved melody of the name of an Indian 
 convert inscribed on a stone behind the bench. 
 
 He took Conrad's arm and they walked together down 
 the path.
 
 92 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 11 1 suppose you know that you have surprised me, 
 Conrad," he said, " but you can't fancy how much. I 
 never heard of any thing of the kind before. I I've not 
 been counting upon it. It opens long vistas of reflec 
 tion. I've scarcely entered them yet. I could not tell 
 you all I think." 
 
 " You must not think any thing unpleasant of us, 
 Brother March." 
 
 " You may be sure that I shall not." 
 
 " We do not usually speak of these things to the peo 
 ple who come to us from outside. They do not see 
 them as we do. Their eyes look another way. I sup 
 pose most eyes look different ways ; we try to make 
 allowances for that. But I thought I ought to tell 
 you." 
 
 " Why me, Conrad ? " 
 
 The young Moravian gave him the vacant look of the 
 deaf. 
 
 " Why tell me more than another ? " repeated March. 
 
 " You ? Oh I do not know. You was asking, was 
 you not ? " 
 
 " I asked about your customs among the unmar 
 ried ? " 
 
 " Well, that was it. You seemed interested." 
 
 " I was. It explains a great deal." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose. I felt it was right to make it clear 
 to you. You have always looked at us friendly, as you 
 might say. You would never have us in derision like 
 some. I thought you ought to know," he repeated, 
 inconclusively, and turned his troubled face away. 
 
 March stopped short in the path, and taking his com 
 panion's shoulder, brought him gently to face him. 
 
 " Conrad, you mean more."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 93 
 
 The brother bowed his flaxen head, and the crimson 
 dyed his fair German skin. 
 
 " Do not, Brother March." 
 
 " I must. I want the truth now. You have all stood 
 by and let me go on making a fool of myself before you 
 too long. I don't know what I've done. I'm not con 
 scious of any wrong. But if there is one, let me know, 
 that I may remedy it, or at least meet you fairly. This 
 blundering in the dark is intolerable. Don't think that 
 keeping the light from me is a charity ; it's a cruelty. 
 You have the light, Conrad. Show it me." 
 
 " I would rather not, Brother March." 
 
 " Then there is something. You admit that." 
 
 " N no, not exactly. There is nothing that you are 
 wrong in. I meant to tell you ! " cried Conrad, in dis 
 tress. " That is true. But I can not now. Indeed, I 
 ask your pardon, Brother March, for not having been 
 more fair with you, as you might say. I did almost 
 deceive you, I suppose. I can not see as it is much better 
 just not to tell the truth than to speak falsely. But I 
 could not tell you ; I did not know how you would take 
 it, and anyway, it was not for you to trouble about it." 
 
 'Not for me? I don't understand. For whom, 
 then ? " 
 
 " Oh, I must not say." 
 
 March turned impatiently and walked on. 
 
 " You are right, Conrad. You are not fair." 
 
 Conrad was sadly silent. He took off his broad hat 
 and mopped his forehead. They walked on for a 
 moment without speaking. As they went into one of the 
 narrow, tributary paths, the blare of trumpets smote the 
 air, and a funeral concourse appeared at the further end 
 of the avenue next them. March remembered he had
 
 94 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 
 
 heard the band's harmonious requiem for a death, from 
 the church tower, a day or two before. A young girl was 
 apparently to be buried, for, behind the musicians, eight 
 maidens, preceded by the Eldress of their Choir, walked 
 beside the bier. Their white raiment, which was not less 
 the costume of the mourners behind, was delicately inter 
 pretative of the current sense of the event. Even the 
 usual colored ribbon which fastened the cap was dis 
 placed, in the case of those most directly interested, by a 
 tie of white. 
 
 The two young men drew aside and watched the sol 
 emn procession. Arrived at the grave, the company 
 separated as usual ; the men taking their stand upon one 
 side, the women remaining upon the other. The 
 trumpets ceased as the bearers deposited the pall by the 
 grave, and a sweet soprano raised her voice in a hymn 
 which all presently joined in singing. In the trees above, 
 the robins maintained their own chirruping chorus, and one 
 of them which had been running along near the open pit, 
 dipping noisily at the humid earth, perched confidently 
 upon the coffin, which stood a little removed from the 
 gathering, and twittering for an instant in the face of the 
 mourners, swept on a fresh flight through the balmy 
 morning air. March touched Conrad's arm, and, by a 
 mutual impulse, they withdrew silently by the path up 
 which they had come, while the sad, final words, in Mr. 
 Keator's gentle voice, followed them through the still 
 ness. Both were moved by the incident ; in its light 
 their colloquy cheapened and faded, so that recurrence 
 to the subject of it seemed a kind of impropriety. 
 
 As they paused outside the gate furthest from the 
 church, "Are you going to the Gemcin Hans ? " asked 
 Conrad.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 95 
 
 " I don't know. It's Easter-even, isn't it ? Yes." 
 
 " Do not." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Do not," repeated Conrad, precisely. 
 
 March regarded him with interest for a moment. 
 
 " Explain yourself, Conrad," he said, calmly. 
 
 Conrad glanced about him in doubt. 
 
 " I would rather not, Brother March," returned he. 
 
 " You have said that before." 
 
 " I know it ; I can not help it," cried he, wringing his 
 hands. 
 
 " You can scarcely expect me to heed an unreasoned 
 request like that," he told him, gravely. " Caesar him 
 self refused to do that," he added, with forced lightness. 
 
 " I was afraid it would be this way," exclaimed the 
 young man. " I do not know what I can say." 
 
 " You might tell me what you mean, for one thing," 
 said March, kindly. 
 
 " I do not see how I can," moaned Conrad. 
 
 March moved nearer and confronted him. 
 
 " Is it wrong that I should be there ? What is it ? " 
 
 " No, I can not rightly say that." 
 
 " There is no danger, surely ? " 
 
 " No, no oh, no ! " he answered, wearily. 
 
 " Conrad," demanded March, with weight, " is it not 
 my duty to be there ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ! " cried he, with helpless honesty. 
 " You might think so." 
 
 " Then come," said March, briefly. 
 7
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FROM the high stoops that clung against the sides of 
 the dwellings, groups variously assorted and characterized 
 were issuing. All were on their way to the church, but 
 the fact seemed not to invite special clothing of body or 
 self-consciousness. The families from which the 
 absence of young men and women was noticeable chat 
 ted with serene gayety. The children, though as blithe 
 some as profaner little people, were not boisterous, and 
 all moved down the village street at a gait of peaceful 
 ease. At the entrance to the comely church of blue 
 limestone the talk suddenly ceased, and the clusters 
 separating with silent precision, the men and women 
 entered by their respective doors. 
 
 The congregation was still gathering when March and 
 Conrad came in and seated themselves near the entrance 
 among the benches allotted to their sex. Conrad's face 
 wore a far-away look that strove to be purely devotional. 
 March gave himself up for the moment to observation of 
 the clumps of twos and threes advancing along the 
 women's aisle with a reverent thoughtfulness in their 
 eyes that might have lent a glamour to duller faces. The 
 door gave at length before the touch of a young girl, at 
 sight of whom March's face faintly lighted. Constance 
 paused a moment to remove a wrap, and the congrega 
 tion seemed at once aware of her presence by the kind of 
 clairvoyance, in which even the decorous Moravian con-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 97 
 
 sciousness will sometimes forget itself. An occasional 
 matron stirred uneasily in her seat and would not turn, 
 several of them did turn, and the children looked around 
 to a child. As she took her way up the bare, sanded 
 path between the benches, the eyes that had ruled them 
 selves until she was within seemly vision, followed her to 
 her seat near the front with kindly curiosity. After she 
 had taken her place certain eyes pursued her with unsat 
 isfied but always tender interest. The glances, of what 
 ever character, had a touch of compassion. 
 
 The doors opened on either side simultaneously, and 
 orderly bands of young men and women filed up the 
 two aisles and swiftly found their seats. The widows, 
 who presently entered together, were not distinguished 
 in dress from those with whom the conjugal tie was 
 unbroken, save by the white cap ribbons. 
 
 The scene was of a curious picturesqueness. Dark 
 ness had begun to fall, and a vague and reluctant light 
 glimmered from the sperm-oil lamps, and cast itself in 
 narrow patches upon the congregation. In the corners 
 it was shadowy enough for the children to imagine ghosts, 
 and indeed certain spectral figures flitted in this region 
 from time to time, which might very well have been the 
 disembodied spirits of the placid brethren of an earlier 
 day. Where the light dwelt brightly it commonly showed 
 a face from which the Moravian life seemed to have puri 
 fied earthly grossness. Doubtless the simple beauty of 
 attire may have had a share in this effect certainly 
 among the women. Their dress was not intentionally 
 uniform ; there was no invariable society garb. But 
 individual taste failed rather pathetically within the 
 limits imposed by the use of quiet colors, and the scanty 
 variety of fabrics brought to the unworldly village by the
 
 98 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 semi-weekly stage. So, though there were trifling idio 
 syncrasies of costume, as futile as the fashion of wearing 
 the beautiful neckdress common to all, or the manner of 
 belting the waist such things as no woman, not in 
 fact translated, ought to be asked to forego there 
 resulted a certain sameness of apparel. Yet it was 
 clearly the prettiest dress in the world, and that must 
 have been a vain spirit which could wish to meddle with 
 the essentials of its monotony. Looking down the aisle 
 now, before the beginning of the service, March admired 
 for the hundredth time its courageous primitiveness. In 
 the uncertain light the pure caps and kerchiefs attracted 
 the lamp glow, making a radiance about themselves ; 
 and they were grateful points in the mystery of the centre 
 of the church which the illumination failed to reach. 
 
 The wind instruments bleated gentle announcement 
 and Mr. Keator pushed open a door and came upon the 
 platform, followed by a company of elders and eld- 
 resses. As they took seats with him, the music caught a 
 bolder note and swelled into one of Haydn's harmonies. 
 When it was finished the pastor rose and read a chapter 
 from St. Paul in the gentle voice whose just accents 
 nevertheless reached his remotest hearer. The singing 
 which followed was alternate between the men and 
 women, relieved, occasionally, by the choir. Mr. Kea- 
 tor's reading of the Litany was not mere elocution, but 
 a fervent prayer, and the simple ritual took new meaning 
 from his earnestness. His sermon was delivered from a 
 meagre collection of notes to which he returned from 
 time to time as he spoke to his people. It had the 
 direct eloquence of conversation ; it was rather a talk 
 than an harangue. He argued, persuaded, sympathized ; 
 he rehearsed the Easter story and made its application
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 99 
 
 to their lives. He seemed talking in secret with each of 
 the souls that looked up at him through rapt eyes. It 
 was not a formalist, not a man doubtful of his faith, 
 uncommissioned to his office, who spoke with them. 
 His manner had the uncounterfeitable quality of conse 
 cration. 
 
 As he finished, Mr. Keator retired behind the plain 
 deal table which was pulpit and lecturn for this plain 
 band of Christians, and leaning his crutch against it bal 
 anced for a moment on his out-spread finger-tips in a 
 kind of sad dreaminess. With a start he returned to 
 memory and rather awkwardly gave out the final hymn. 
 During the singing of this the congregation, which had 
 listened, to the sermon, forgetful of temporal matters of 
 immediate interest, grew curiously restless. A single, 
 magnetic sense, too volatile for analysis, often pervades 
 large gatherings. It is not a thing which a spectator 
 can define, but his perception of its existence is not to 
 be argued .with ; perhaps even the members of such bod 
 ies could not always interpret their emotion. The,sub- 
 conscious sentiment stirring this company, was, perhaps, 
 one of expectancy. As the song ended and the quiver 
 ing Amen rose in chorus, Mr. Keator stepped forward 
 with an uncertain look that at once besought aid and 
 proudly put it away; but instead of raising his hands 
 above his flock for benison he took his former attitude 
 at the table and stood for a moment glancing undeterm- 
 inedly about and leaning heavily on his crutch. His 
 eyes told over the men and women before him one by 
 one ; they circled round the dim-lit church twice, but 
 refused to inform him of a certain corner directly beneath 
 him. He seemed at length to compel himself to look, 
 and his gaze challenged Constance's face, wistfully.
 
 TOO A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 She was either unconscious of his glance or would 
 not betray her perception of it, and the minister turned 
 away, wearily. He gave a mild cough and made as if 
 he would begin to speak, but his usual pallor sensibly 
 deepened and he went back to Elder Weiss, who sat 
 next the pastoral chair, and appeared to entreat him. 
 The Elder nodded, and coming forward took his place, 
 while Mr. Keator, seating himself with the aid of his 
 crutch, regarded the scene in a species of anxious apathy. 
 
 The ready confidence of the Elder was in contrast with 
 the minister's manner. He was seemingly not harassed 
 by sentiment of any kind, but, launching a glance toward 
 Constance, moved glibly into his vicarious undertaking. 
 The people listened with unconcealed eagerness. 
 
 " Our pastor and brother," he began, " does not feel 
 equal at the moment to the discharge of his painful duty. 
 Christ, whose cross he bears in these regions, sees fit to 
 chasten him, and he does not enjoy the health that most 
 of our dear brethren and sisters are blessed with." 
 
 His look dwelt with unconscious complacency for an 
 instant on his own sleek form ; then he pursued fluently : 
 
 " The Conference had a hard question brought before 
 it at its last session. I suppose we might say it is owing 
 to the presence of a stranger in our settlement." A 
 flutter of excitement passed over the congregation, to the 
 subtle flattery of which Elder Weiss was not dead. " We 
 can not blame him," he went on, apparently finding the 
 orator's reward in his work. " I should suppose we 
 hardly had the right. He is probably ignorant of some 
 features of our system and we ought to give him the ben 
 efit of the doubt. We are taught that when circumstan 
 ces bring to our knowledge one of Christ's children he 
 should at once become estimable and dear to us. But of
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. IOI 
 
 course we must protect ourselves. That we shall do by 
 measures among our flock. As for him," said the Elder, 
 largely, " we desire only to state the facts, believing 
 that he will feel to do the right thing." Then, pausing 
 a moment to recover from the colloquial lapse of his last 
 phrase : " But our chief business on this eve of our Sav 
 iour's resurrection is not with him. Sister Constance 
 Van Cleef," he commanded, raising his voice and throw 
 ing into it an awful reproof, " you will please rise." 
 
 Constance, who had been regarding him with amaze 
 ment, now stared at him in helpless horror. Surely he 
 could not mean it. The instant during which she hesi 
 tated seemed to March an eternity. He expected her 
 to rise and leave the church. He could imagine how 
 she would do it. Instead he saw her slip off the mantle 
 with which she had covered herself, as if she had taken 
 a resolution, and rise mechanically out of its folds. The 
 calm, steadfast gaze with which she confronted Elder 
 Weiss seemed to March wholly admirable. The Elder's 
 demand was stricken under it with commonplace. It 
 might have been a tragedy, but her passionless face 
 seemed to say that she had come prepared for just this 
 ordeal. Nothing else upheld this supposition, however, 
 and March knew sadly its error. When the Elder had 
 first called upon her he had not obeyed his inclination 
 in keeping his seat ; and he beheld marveling the proud 
 motions of the girl which made assistance ridiculous. 
 Ah, yes ! Lady Amprey was right. She knew very well 
 whither she was going. The Elder stood hesitating 
 before her manner and she glanced swiftly over the large 
 gathering. The people met her gaze with looks of min 
 gled accusation and pity, and she turned at once from 
 them and waited for the Elder to go on, with still hauteur.
 
 102 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Before this the company visibly humbled. She was 
 indeed a sumptuous figure as she stood motionless in 
 the wan glare of the lamps above her. Her erect, daunt 
 less attitude clothed the Moravian garb for the moment 
 with an especial dignity and significance ; and March, 
 who had once said to himself that she was not pretty, 
 wondered at his fatuity. For the space of the few rapid 
 seconds that passed before Elder Weiss continued, she 
 was something infinitely finer. 
 
 " It is upon you, Sister Van Cleef," pursued the Elder, 
 " that reproof falls. We can not expect so much from a 
 stranger, though we mean that he shall understand our 
 rules ; but those within the fold can not plead ignorance. 
 It is with them, and with every one of them, that the 
 cause of Christ here upon earth, in however small degree, 
 rests ; and they can not evade their sacred charge." The 
 Elder warmed with his eloquence : " It is a blessed priv 
 ilege, but it has its responsibilities. One of these we 
 understand to be obedience to the Church. The Church's 
 laws spring purely from the word of God. They aim to 
 fulfill his will here in this temporary state as far as we 
 can learn it, and you, Sister, however you may have 
 fallen into the wrong, will not deny that it is your duty 
 to obey your Saviour's commandments. A whole series 
 of these, as the Church interprets them, relates to mar 
 riage." His hearers started. " I shall speak plainly. 
 The concern and even the presence of a stranger must 
 not affect our usual way in these matters. 
 
 " When your father, Brother Van Cleef who we learn 
 with regret is unwell received Mr. March " a keener 
 quiver of agitation ran through the assembly at this open 
 mention of the name, and Constance shuddered uncon 
 trollably " into his house as a guest," pursued the
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 103 
 
 Elder, placidly, " we did not object. Our theory as to 
 strangers and respecting the proprieties of hospitality 
 partly restrained us. If your own position toward the 
 Church, however, Sister Van Cleef, had been more clearly 
 denned, we should not have hesitated. These considera 
 tions would have been overriden, and Mr. March would 
 have been taken to the tavern, or permitted to dwell for 
 the time with some brother not having a young woman 
 in his household." 
 
 The Elder paused, as if to emphasize the crudity of 
 this mode of statement, and here and there a head turned 
 and glanced sympathetically at March. When this exor 
 dium had begun he had sat listening fearfully, with a 
 memory of Conrad's warning ; as Elder Weiss named 
 him to her, he clutched his companion's knee in silent 
 anger. He heard him now through a stupor in which he 
 could not command his immobile limbs, nor turn away 
 the eyes which bent upon the Elder in concentrated out 
 rage. 
 
 " You have declined," the Elder went on, " to asso 
 ciate yourself with the Choir of Single Sisters ; and 
 though you are a probationary member of the Church 
 and wear our dress, you do not regularly attend our 
 meetings. You have, therefore, not been held by the 
 Conference to a strict accountability as our dear sisters 
 of the full communion. Your association with the young 
 men of the settlement of your own age has not been 
 especially hindered except by your father's judgment, 
 though in this we must fairly own that you have not 
 hitherto overstepped. But for our own protection, as I 
 have said, we must set a limit, and in the case as to which 
 I am now speaking, we have felt bound to. Our dear 
 pastor," said he, turning to Mr. Keator, whose face,
 
 104 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 however, was hidden by his hand, and who stretched one 
 arm toward him imploringly, " was instructed by the 
 Conference to warn you. This, as you know, he did. 
 You have fully understood, and you have gone on per 
 sistently audaciously, I may say in the face of the 
 Church's commands. We have no alternative. Your 
 relation with this young man may mean nothing or not ; 
 we do not know. But the example which it holds up 
 before the young people " here he turned to the class 
 designated, as they sat grouped on either side the aisle 
 behind her " is dangerous in the extreme. Moreover, 
 the Church has especial ordinances, as you know, apply 
 ing to strangers. One of these forbids the marriage of a 
 member of the society with a stranger, another clandes 
 tine betrothals. Now we ' 
 
 The girl, who up to this time had stood bravely con 
 fronting him with haggard fixity, sank abruptly in an 
 impotent heap to the bench. " Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! " she 
 moaned, in anguish. The congregation waited, breath 
 less. Her head fell forward and some of the sisters 
 near sprang toward her compassionately, thinking her 
 faint. As they clustered about the bench, however, she 
 leaped up with a hard, dry sob, and waving them off 
 with broken queenliness took her way swiftly down the 
 sanded aisle. On the steps without she encountered 
 March.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONSTANCE would not recognize the bitter, angry tears, 
 through which she looked bravely at him. March came 
 quickly up to her and took her hand, with eager sym 
 pathy. 
 
 " Don't mind it, Miss Van Cleef. It was horrible, but 
 you will keep your courage. The sun is still shining ; 
 the earth continues to revolve. Things seem black and 
 strange to you, I suppose, but they are the same, and 
 you you are the same. Do you think that what one 
 man may say can really change you to yourself or 
 others ! " 
 
 He spoke rapidly, with no care for his logic. His aim 
 was simply to console her, and her grateful glance helped 
 him to believe himself momentarily successful. 
 
 As he released her hand, she murmared, beseechingly, 
 " Take me home ! " 
 
 They went swiftly down the porch together, and along 
 the street to the dwelling of Dr. Van Cleef. March cast 
 furtive, pitying looks at her. Her suffering painted itself 
 sadly upon her face, but she did not speak. In the 
 anguished moments that lengthened between them he 
 yearned toward her with an impulse of compassion that 
 unsexed their relation of young man and young woman, 
 and was almost like the lofty mother-tenderness. 
 
 Before her home the girl paused, looking up at the
 
 106 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 door with an infinite melancholy in her streaming eyes. 
 Then she turned away with a shudder, and convulsively 
 seized his arm. 
 
 " Oh ! I can not ! Let us go away ! Let us get out of 
 sight ! " 
 
 March drew closer the arm she had unconsciously 
 placed in his, and went forward with decision. She 
 thanked him for the assumption of protection and leader 
 ship with a look, and kept pace with his quick strides, as 
 if she had lost all will, or was glad to merge it for the 
 moment in his. His gaze dwelt upon her again in sor 
 rowful sympathy, and, suddenly glancing up, she took it 
 upon her face like a hot breath, and turned away with 
 warm cheeks. 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef, will you be my wife ? " 
 
 " No, Mr. March," he heard her whisper. She did not 
 turn her head. 
 
 They went on in conscious silence. They found them 
 selves seated at last on a bench in the cemetery in the 
 face of the young moon. The loneliness of the place 
 was grateful to Constance ; it seemed to brood about her 
 as a defending cloud. She sat regarding the spare lunar 
 crescent stonily, though from time to time in uncontroll 
 able anguish she wrung the hands clasped in her lap. 
 The day was in those last moments which are neither 
 light nor darkness. The earth gristled and blackened, 
 then was bright again in patches of gray, then once more 
 hesitantly black. 
 
 " Ah, why, why should they be so cruel ? What right 
 had they ? " cried Constance. 
 
 March, who had received much illumination within the 
 past hour, was silent. He could put his own offence out 
 of the way, but he found it difficult to talk of hers.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 107 
 
 " It was Elder Weiss," she said, more calmly, after a 
 moment. " I must not speak so harshly of the people. 
 They are every thing that is good." 
 
 " They mean to be." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; and when one thinks of it no, I can't go 
 so far." 
 
 " One may be too generous," said March, quickly. 
 
 " Yes, but one may so much more easily be too selfish 
 and narrow-sighted," returned she, with a smile which 
 cheered March in spite of its wanness. " In a way, I 
 almost deserve it. I brought it on myself. I would not 
 heed the warning. Yet what wrong had I done ? We 
 need not speak of it. I don't see how we can," she 
 told him, with a faint blush, " but we understand 
 you understand." She stopped suddenly. 
 
 "It was cruel." 
 
 " No, it was just. I ought to suffer. If I had done as 
 my father wished, if I had become a faithful Moravian 
 like himself, like Mr. Keator, it would not have hap 
 pened. It is a judgment. I should have listened to 
 warnings, I suppose. I should. . . . No, I should not," 
 exclaimed she, with sudden conviction. " Why should 
 I ? How should I ? They asked too much. They were 
 rude ; they were insulting. They are now. Ah, could 
 any thing be worse than that scene ? " 
 
 She burst into hysterical tears at length and hid her 
 face in her handkerchief. It was evidently for March to 
 take the generous view. 
 
 " It is as we look at it," consoled he. 
 
 Constance choked back a sob and raised her head. 
 
 " There is only one way of looking at it. Do you 
 think the outrage, the horror of it will not always remain 
 with me ? Do you fancy that the picture of Elder Weiss
 
 io8 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 standing there and stabbing me moment after moment 
 with his quiet, wicked words will ever leave me ? I know 
 Mr. Keator did not mean him to go so far ; the congre 
 gation may have thought him too hard. But does that 
 make it easier ? I feel as if I had been dragged through 
 the streets like the poor wretches in the Reign of Terror ; 
 as if all that was most sacred to me, had been turned 
 open to a mob. Oh, it was too shameful ! " She paused 
 for a moment. " And I can tell it to you ! " mused the 
 poor girl. " That is only a part of the shame. I have 
 no longer any reserves. There is no corner of my heart 
 into which the world has not the right to pry." 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef, Miss Van Cleef, pray don't do pen 
 ance to your imagination in that way ! " 
 
 She looked at him thoughtfully as she wiped her eyes. 
 
 " You think I exaggerate. How is it possible to mag 
 nify such a thing ? " 
 
 " By letting others see how much it seems to you," 
 said March, seriously. " Don't you see that it really means 
 nothing for any one, but but us, Miss Van Cleef ? If 
 we do not find it beyond remedy, others can not. They 
 have not the right. It is our position toward it that 
 determines the quality of the offence. It outrages you, 
 of course. I assure you that my own feeling about it is 
 strong enough, but " 
 
 " Forgive me, Mr. March. I have been making you 
 listen to my tirades about myself, forgetting your feeling. 
 And it has hurt you, too ! Strange that I never 
 thought of that. To you it must be even worse. 
 Ah, shall we never get to the end of the shame of it ! " 
 
 " At once, Miss Van Cleef, if you will. It is really, as 
 I say, only a question of our attitude ; and I have pro 
 posed an attitude. You refused to assume it. Will you
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 109 
 
 not reconsider your determination ? Miss Van Cleef," he 
 begged, " will you not be my wife ? " 
 
 " It is impossible that we should talk of that, Mr. 
 March," said she, with the dignity which even in this 
 strait did not abandon her. Then after a pause she 
 added, with emotion, " I see how you feel that you are 
 bound to offer me that resource. It is good of you. 
 Believe me, I appreciate it. I think I see my position 
 quite plainly, and it is certainly distressing enough. But 
 it is not so bad as that. Surely, if it is as you say, we 
 can live it down alone, and it would be wicked to sacri 
 fice two lives to it." 
 
 " I did not say it would be a sacrifice, if I may speak for 
 one of them," urged March, quietly. 
 
 " No, I know you did not. But what reason is there 
 but this for a marriage between us ? " She struggled to 
 say it judicially ; her blush, however, would not be 
 repressed. "And this, as I say," she stammered, " is not a 
 reason." 
 
 " It is the best of reasons. Miss Van Cleef, I do not 
 pretend that I am in love. Heaven knows the hints of 
 that man were false enough. We have been much 
 together. He built upon that, I suppose. But there has 
 been no love-making, I think. We have understood each 
 other excellently, have we not ? " 
 
 This was not the fashion in which her fancy had taught 
 her she should be wooed, and her woman nature shrank 
 from the bald truth of these statements. But her reason 
 instantly condemned her, and she obliged herself to take 
 her hands from her face and let him see her crimson 
 cheeks. 
 
 " All that would come in time," he went on. " We are 
 accustomed to practicing the amenities. There are some
 
 110 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 things we can depend upon each other for. I don't see 
 why we should be unhappy." 
 
 He made this argument with the conscientious fullness 
 of an advocate who feels that he has an obligation to make 
 his plea complete, whatever the infirmity of his cause. 
 
 The flush kept Constance's cheek. 
 
 " You are extremely generous, Mr. March," she said, 
 with a nervous smile. " You dramatize your inclination 
 as an opponent, and argue against it wonderfully well. 
 But I must not let myself be led away by such sophistry. 
 As sophistry it's very good," she told him, with twinkling 
 eyes. " It's so good that it may even be in process of 
 deceiving its author. There is the more reason, there 
 fore, that one of us should try to keep her feet." 
 
 " But" 
 
 " I can never thank you sufficiently," she said, cutting 
 in dexterously, with instant seriousness. " But you will 
 imagine my gratitude. Yes, do, please, and we will not 
 speak of this again. A woman at her worst must be 
 allowed her right of decision in matters like this, you 
 know," concluded she, with a smile of finality ; and at 
 this assertion of girlish prerogative she seemed to gather 
 herself together. 
 
 It was slowly growing dark, and the slender moon 
 began to make a dim radiance in the open place 
 where they sat. The low-lying grave stones did not 
 show clearly through the shrubbery in the waning light, 
 and one could not be asked at this time to think the place 
 any thing but a highly successful park. 
 
 March could not avoid a thrill of relief at her definite 
 statement. It seemed to him that he discharged his con 
 science, in making this offer with proper urging of 
 its advantage ; it was obviously supererogatory to desire
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. Ill 
 
 her acceptance. If he consented to set a knife dangling 
 above his head, he could not be expected to long that it 
 should fall. 
 
 As Constance sat observing the moon when she had 
 ceased speaking, this figure, as expressing a young man's 
 sense of her affirmative answer to an offer of marriage, 
 might certainly have appeared harsh. Her fine head, 
 which was faintly turned from him, made a charming effect 
 in curves, and the perfect outline of her face was prettily 
 cut against the meagre light. 
 
 But, as he had said, and now reassured himself, he was 
 not in love with her ; and this is a thing which is so 
 clearly a matter of taste that no one should think of 
 disputing about it. 
 
 He said nothing in answer to her, and it was Con 
 stance who finally commented lightly, 
 
 " Isn't it absurd ? " 
 
 " Probably," answered March, laughing. " What ? " 
 
 " Why, that we should be sitting here in this prosaic, 
 unembarrassed way. I can't imagine how it has hap 
 pened." 
 
 To March the frankness of this seemed uncommonly 
 admirable. It banished self-consciousness from the 
 world and exiled shyness, while at the same moment it 
 delicately instructed the observant listener that both 
 banishment and exile were swiftly revocable. 
 
 " One would think we didn't understand the proprie 
 ties of such an occasion. It is a very embarrassing one, 
 Miss Van Cleef, is it not ? " he asked, smiling. 
 
 " Not if we don't make it so," answered Constance, crit 
 ically. 
 
 " Ah, that's it ! As I say, it's all in the view." 
 
 The reader, who occasionally finds something not 
 8
 
 112 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 wholly congruous in the attitude of this pair toward 
 serious facts, is begged to condone their foible. 
 With March, at least, his unfailingly cheerful outlook 
 was a kind of creed ; one would have said that he kept a 
 supply of buoyancy in such portable vats as those in 
 which Gulliver's professor proposed to bottle sunshine, 
 and charged himself, if one might call it so, at frequent 
 intervals. 
 
 "You are so good, Mr. March," returned Constance. 
 " It is very kind to help me find a bright side 
 to it all. But you can't give me a new disposition, can 
 you ?" inquired she, suddenly turning toward him with 
 a half smile. " No, I think not. I have tried to take it 
 your way. But I can't. I'm afraid it must make a 
 difference to others than us. Nothing, I suppose, affects 
 only those apparently concerned. We live in so large a 
 world, and touch it at so many points. Why, a crack in 
 the ice it radiates in all directions, but it might start 
 with one's foot. Even when one is only suspected of 
 wrong," pursued she, with less calm, reddening faintly, 
 " and is quite, quite in the right, the consequences are 
 more than one could think. It is as well for men to talk so. 
 They must believe it, and it is a pleasant way to see it. 
 But it's not a woman's way, and it can't be. You don't 
 know what you ask." 
 
 " I think I do now," returned March, earnestly. " I'll 
 even agree with you up to a certain point. One forgets 
 easily enough that he is really talking to a million years 
 or so of tradition when he talks with a woman, and I 
 fell into the error," he said, quizzically. " But you are 
 committed already as to our own fortunate attitude, and 
 I warn you that I shall hold you to it. Having found 
 the beautiful bravery to make so little of this which
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 113 
 
 might excusably have been made so much of, you can't 
 recede. I shan't allow it, Miss Van Cleef." 
 
 " Miss Million Years," corrected she, gayly, but her 
 lips trembled a little. 
 
 He gave a light laugh. 
 
 " You have a dreadful way of applying things person 
 ally," he said. 
 
 She had been absently twisting her handkerchief about 
 her fingers. Tightening its lines with emphasis, she 
 rose hastily. 
 
 " Isn't that arbutus ? " she asked, and one might have 
 thought that it genuinely concerned her ; " it looks like 
 the leaf." 
 
 She crossed the broad way along which the bench was 
 placed and stooped in one of the lateral paths. 
 
 March followed her. 
 
 " It wasn't," she announced, as he came up, " but there 
 is usually a great deal about here. I don't think I ever 
 hunted for it by moonlight. Let us try." 
 
 She was not accurate, since the sun's light had not 
 entirely faded ; yet it was evidently not daylight. They 
 turned aside from the path and walked together among 
 the thinly ranked trees. There were no graves in this 
 part of the cemetery. Their feet seemed to make a great 
 noise in the dead leaves, and as neither spoke, Constance 
 presently found an inexplicable relief in causing those 
 over which she passed to rustle louder. She often 
 stooped in the fading light to bend a green tuft that rose 
 from the desert of brown leaves, with a skillful motion. 
 From time to time she unearthed tiny sprigs of the flower, 
 and exultingly took the two or three bells of pink, with 
 their characteristic background of decay and freshest 
 green, to her nostrils.
 
 114 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 They came in a moment upon a cleared space, dotted 
 with mounds of leaves, which had fallen after the last 
 autumn raking, and had now been neatly gathered by 
 the brethren. All the remaining light availed here, and 
 with the growing radiance of the moon, shone upon an 
 open from which the tender pink of the arbutus, half 
 veiled by its leaves, looked shyly up at them. Constance 
 fell upon it with a raptured exclamation, and plucked 
 greedily for a few moments in silence. March stood 
 watching her. She rose at length and picked her way 
 carefully through the gemmed bed to one of the mounds 
 on the other side the clearing. She seated herself on the 
 yielding pile and March took one of the heaps near her. 
 
 It was not chilly in the glade, though the unpositive 
 warmth of the day had left nothing. that gave a distinct 
 impression of heat. The Spring reached March afe he 
 sat idly flirting the arbutus with his stick, and furtively 
 observing Constance, through a nameless and novel zest 
 in the air, which he found a charm the more to know 
 that he could not put his finger on it. 
 
 " Perhaps I am a little greedy," said Constance. 
 
 She sat erect on the soft dais opposite him, and held 
 up a thick, odorous bunch. 
 
 " I don't think the flowers object. They are glad to 
 be plucked by a lover." 
 
 " I meant as to yourself." 
 
 " I shall be satisfied with a nosegay for my coat." 
 
 " You know I came out here for rebellion," she said, 
 irrelevantly. 
 
 " I hadn't thought. But I've bought up all the guilt 
 in the matter, if there is any, and I warn you I shall hold 
 the shares at fabulous rates." 
 
 The lingering day abruptly died ; a faint breeze swept
 

 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 115 
 
 over the thick-sown fields of petals. Through the cir 
 cular opening in the trees above the moon gleamed coldly. 
 Constance shivered and rose. For a moment she stood 
 quite still in sad musing, and presently she suffered the 
 bouquet in her hand to fall with an absent motion. 
 
 " You have dropped the flowers," said March, rising 
 to restore them to her. 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 " You don't want them ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Her tone was listless, not contemptuous, and she kept 
 her place, in meditation. 
 
 " Come, Mr. March," said she, at length, with sudden 
 effort. " It is late enough even for rebellion." 
 
 She compelled a weary smile of gayety to her lips, and 
 led the way out of the cemetery. 
 
 There was no one in the street but the gray-headed 
 watchman with his staff and lantern, who passed them, 
 softly humming a hymn. As they went into the house 
 his husky bass warned from the thither end of the 
 town : 
 
 " The clock is eight ! To Judea all is told, 
 How Noah and his seven were saved of old." 
 
 March and Constance stood in the open doorway 
 waiting silently for his last note. As the old man's voice 
 died away she whispered, indicating, 
 
 " There is a good fire in the parlor. I must go up to 
 father." 
 
 She looked toward him a moment with trembling lips. 
 
 " Ah, what will he say ? " cried she. 
 
 Then turning from him with a swift nod she ran noise 
 lessly up the stair.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HER aunt met her outside the door with her finger on 
 her lips, and Constance shrank back with a sudden fear. 
 
 " What is it! Is he worse ? " 
 
 " I am afraid so," answered Miss Cynthia, in hushed 
 tones, and as she came near Constance saw new, haggard 
 lines in her face. " He had an attack after you left. It 
 was very severe. Dr. Click has been with him a long 
 time. No, no, you must not yet ! " exclaimed she, in a 
 hasty whisper, as Constance attempted to pass her. 
 
 " Why not ? Can I not see my father ? It is my place, 
 aunt," she said, in a tone that Miss Cynthia would not 
 ordinarily have questioned. 
 
 " Not now, my child ! Not now ! You would only 
 disturb him. I am not in the room myself. Doctor only 
 lets me watch him from the alcove and give him his 
 medicine. What is the matter, Constance ? You look 
 worn and excited." 
 
 Miss Cynthia glanced doubtfully at the girl through 
 her spectacles. 
 
 Constance turned away without replying. 
 
 " I might have done something if I had been here ! " 
 was the interior cry that tortured her. Grief is uncon 
 sciously egotistical in its first moments. 
 
 " When can I see my father ? " asked she, coldly, as she 
 faced her aunt.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 117 
 
 " I can not tell you. After a while. It is most im 
 portant that he should not be excited just now. Con 
 stance, you believe that I would not pain you needlessly," 
 said she, more softly. 
 
 " You will call me ? " was the girl's only answer, as she 
 turned toward her room. 
 
 " Yes, my dear." 
 
 These two had never come very close. The uncom 
 mon endearment touched Constance, and with a quick 
 impulse she returned and kissed her aunt. 
 
 " We must support each other," she said. " There is 
 no one else." She hushed Miss Cynthia's sudden burst 
 of grief. " Now it is you, aunt ! " whispered she, with 
 joyless lightness ; but a quick, sickening horror seized 
 her. 
 
 The rarity of Miss Cynthia's tears made them notable. 
 At this critical time they were a luxury burdened with 
 meaning. 
 
 "Oh! why do you cry?" Constance choked a sob. 
 " Let me go, aunt ! Let me go ! " she gasped, in a 
 fright still only half familiar to her. 
 
 She went swiftly to her room and flung herself upon 
 the bed in mortal anguish. For a space she lay weeping 
 and bemoaning herself like any woman. Her tears ceased 
 suddenly at last. She rose resolutely, and going to her 
 mirror, removed her mantle, and quickly wiped her eyes. 
 Then with a series of those dexterous touches, the art 
 of which, fortunately, no crisis loses to a woman, she 
 repaired the ruin which had overtaken her hair, smoothed 
 her crumpled dress, and walked firmly down stairs. The 
 wisdom of that arrangement of human affairs which forces 
 attention to the cogs and oil-cups of life's engine while 
 the main machine is convulsed by a supreme disaster,
 
 Il8 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 has been often celebrated ; and it was the hope of a pos 
 sible refuge in one little duty as well as her sharp recoil 
 from the unworthiness and futility of emotion at this 
 time which gave Constance strength to dry her eyes and 
 go down. She ordered tea brought into the dining-room, 
 and, having seated herself at the table, asked the servant 
 to request Mr. March's presence. 
 
 " Tea, Miss Van Cleef ? " he asked, as he came into the 
 cheerful room. 
 
 " Wasn't it in your accounts?" she inquired, with one 
 of her rare blushes. 
 
 It was very well to say that she would forget, and 
 certainly there was other sufficiently grave matter for her 
 thoughts. But it was not easy. 
 
 " I think I can give you five minutes to prepare your 
 mind for it. It will take that long to make the tea," she 
 said. 
 
 The table had been abbreviated and set for two. 
 March's demeanor may not have fairly interpreted his 
 feeling, but it would have been difficult to find in his 
 smiling face, as he seated himself opposite his hostess 
 with deliberation, and glanced amiably at her over the 
 pretty tea service, a report of the occurrences of the 
 day. 
 
 " Are you hungry ? " she asked, for something to say. 
 
 "Very ! " he assured her, with an accentuation of his 
 smile. 
 
 She made the tea in thoughtful silence, while March 
 told himself it was unnecessary to be in love with a 
 young girl to have a certain pleasure in confronting her 
 alone, while she made tea in a graceful pot on a table 
 whose glistening mahogany and dainty furnishings 
 frolicsomely took the light of the open fire.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 119 
 
 He glanced up as she poured the tea and caught the 
 look of pitiful abstraction on her face. 
 
 " You are not keeping our agreement," said he. " I 
 thought you were not to take it so hard." 
 
 " It's not that," she said. 
 
 " Has that man has any one dared ? " 
 
 " No, no ! my father " 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef, is he worse ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know I am afraid. When I left him 
 he seemed quite as usual. He begged me to go to 
 church. It was to please him. He wishes some 
 member of the family always to be present, and on 
 Easter Even above all. But there must have come a 
 sudden change. He had a bad attack once before, but 
 Dr. Glick brought him out of it successfully. Now " 
 
 Her voice faltered. 
 
 " It can hardly be very bad, coming so suddenly." 
 
 " I suppose not. I hope not. But it is horrible, 
 coming now. It is as if heaven had heard my selfish 
 prayer. It was that in some way I should not have to 
 tell him. Ever since it happened that has been my 
 thought : ' I must tell father ; father must know,' and I 
 have shrunk from it. I hoped and planned to get away ; 
 to leave here with him before he could know it. It 
 was very wrong. He would wish to know. He must 
 know some time. But still there was that cowardly 
 instinct of self-defence. I know what you would say : 
 Father is kind. He would not blame me. No, that is 
 true ; that is what would hurt me. I should feel that I 
 had wounded him bitterly, and he would never speak of 
 it, never complain. You do not know his pride in his 
 Church, and the Church has reproved his daughter. 
 That is a thing I could not tell him."
 
 120 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 She had been speaking calmly, though rapidly. Sud 
 denly her voice failed and her eyes filled. She took up 
 the little cream jug at her hand and absently poured its 
 entire contents into March's waiting cup. 
 
 " Now now, you see, I must tell him ! " 
 
 She gave March a look that demanded his sympathy. 
 The logic was not clear, but he understood her perfectly. 
 
 " Certainly. I know," said he, musingly. 
 
 His eyes were fixed on the representation of Washing 
 ton crossing the Delaware, above her head, and his 
 thoughts had evidently undertaken a long journey sug 
 gested by her words. 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef," asked he, suddenly, " will you 
 excuse me for a moment? " 
 
 Constance sat silently wondering until he returned. 
 As he entered her face questioned him. 
 
 " Whom does your father consult in Philadelphia ? " 
 
 " Dr. Fleet," replied the girl, mechanically. " Where 
 are you going ? " added she, as he turned away. 
 
 " To bring him, if you will give me permission. He is 
 skillful, is he not? eminent that sort of thing?" 
 
 " Of course the best," she answered. Her eyes fol 
 lowed him to the door with vague bewilderment. " But 
 what do you mean ? How shall you get him ? " 
 
 " I am going down to the inn to book my passage in 
 to-morrow's coach." 
 
 " You must not do that. Surely it is not necessary. 
 You said yourself just now it could not be very serious." 
 
 March looked troubled. 
 
 " Did I ? Well, it's not, I think ; at least it is not 
 alarming." Her face paled as he said these words slowly 
 and with an effect of embarrassment. " But the fact is 1 
 just ran up and saw your aunt and Dr. Click. It's not
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 12 1 
 
 bad, I gather ; but it's not to be trifled with. You know 
 that sort of thing," he said, with a slight wave of his 
 hand which he meant to be reassuring. " Not serious, 
 you know ; not at all. But just as well to be looked 
 after. I fancy Dr. Click would be glad of a little 
 counsel himself." 
 
 " Does he does he think father very ill ? " 
 
 " Certainly not, Miss Van Cleef ; but you can imagine 
 his being willing to have the light of a little larger expe 
 rience upon the case. Dr. Click is an excellent physician, 
 no doubt ; but he is young." 
 
 "Yes, yes, of course," answered Constance. She 
 sighed. " Do what you think right, Mr. March. I shall 
 be satisfied. But I really don't like you to take such a 
 journey for us." 
 
 " Oh, if that is all ! " 
 
 " Couldn't it be done in some other way ? Couldn't 
 you send ? " 
 
 " Not with any certainty. You must know that, Miss 
 Van Cleef." 
 
 " No, no ! Well, if you will. But you take our grati 
 tude with you," she said, rising and impetuously holding 
 out her hand, while she gave him her richest smile. " You 
 must remember that. You are altogether too good, but 
 we have at least the grace to appreciate the fact. And I 
 think I shall like it that Dr. Fleet should come," she 
 ended, softly. 
 
 With that far-away look in her eyes she struck March 
 as extraordinarily pretty. 
 
 " You will come back to supper ? " she asked, as he 
 went, but the outer door had closed behind him, and she 
 went back and finished the meal alone. 
 
 When he returned, a half-hour later, he ran silently up
 
 122 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 to his room and changed his dress. Constance only 
 knew he had come back by the click of the closing door 
 when he went out again presently. She had been 
 admitted to the sick-chamber at length, and sat immobile 
 in a straight-backed chair with her hands folded in her 
 lap. She had removed her cap, and the thick blonde 
 hair disposed itself about her head with unconscious 
 grace. The screen which she had set before the candle 
 threw all the light on her absorbed features as she stared 
 at the stricken form lying in the shadow. Dr. Van Cleef 
 had not spoken or recognized her ; and had only stirred 
 restlessly when at her entrance she had held the candle 
 above him in grieving question of his pale face. Miss 
 Cynthia slept peacefully in the curtained alcove, and 
 Constance was alone with her thoughts. Her vision 
 included nothing but the softly-breathing figure on the 
 couch. 
 
 Her thought also dwelt chiefly upon her father, and 
 when it wandered, soon came back to him and the relent 
 less fear which she would not name. Her occasional 
 mental excursions into other regions of reflection seemed 
 to pain her, for she returned to the thought of the sick 
 man with a frightened sigh. 
 
 Certain memories encompassed and solicited her, only 
 to wound and thrust her back." Everything had been 
 bright this morning, the fates seemed well disposed, the 
 world welcomed her as an appropriate figure. It seemed 
 impossible that she was the same girl who had light- 
 heartedly bidden her father and aunt and Mr. March 
 good-morning. In their innocence they had wished her 
 a like happiness. The sarcasm was almost amusing ; she 
 stilled a pitiful laugh. Had she listened to Elder Weiss ? 
 Had those atrocious words been meant for her ? Had
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 123 
 
 they been spoken before the whole congregation, before 
 the few who loved and understood her, the many who 
 distrusted her for her cold allegiance to the Church and 
 indefinable difference from them ? On this day also she 
 had been asked in marriage. That, one would say, was 
 not occasion for a young girl's regret ; but it had followed 
 and grown out of the other. It meant nothing in itself. 
 He had himself assured her of that. It was all part of 
 the same wretched, irreparable matter. And finally the 
 intolerable point her lothness to make the occurrences 
 of the day known to her father, and her present haunting 
 fear that the choice had been taken forever from her 
 hands. She looked into the future with a chilling sense 
 of her loneliness : she recoiled from it as if she had been 
 suddenly pushed into the storm which she perceived 
 beginning outside. But the thought was tonic rather 
 than cowing, and she remembered that she must be brave. 
 
 Constance rose, and throvang open the window, leaned 
 out to draw in the shutter. The wind fled howling 
 through the trees. A dozen swift, sharp drops, messen 
 gers of the storm, hurtled upon her face and head. Down 
 the dark, wind-swept street a single light burned steadily 
 behind an unshuttered window. It was in Mr. Keator's 
 study. Her face brightened as she saw it. 
 
 " Not alone ! " she said, thoughtfully, to herself, as she 
 barred the heavy shutters. " There will always be Mr. 
 Keator." 
 
 She stirred up the failing fire and threw fresh wood on 
 it. As she went to give her father his medicine the 
 storm burst over the village. An appalling clap of thun 
 der shook the house and went detonating southward. 
 
 Constance stood erect with the unemptied spoon in her 
 hand.
 
 124 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Poor creatures who are out in such a storm ! " she 
 said, musingly. 
 
 " What what is that ? " asked her father, thickly, 
 speaking for the first time. 
 
 " Nothing, dear father ; nothing," answered Constance, 
 stooping quickly at the sound of his voice. " Here is 
 your medicine." 
 
 He sipped it thirstily as she held him up, and dropped 
 back with a moan upon the pillow, where he instantly 
 relapsed into his former stupor. Constance regarded him 
 for some minutes in misery ; presently she wiped her 
 eyes with a swift motion, and regaining herself, walked 
 into the alcove where Miss Cynthia slept. She had 
 neglected to close the shutters here, and, the window 
 having been left partly open, the rain was flooding the 
 floor. Opening the casement resolutely, she threw out 
 her arms to catch the shutters, which had become 
 detached from their fastenings and were beating against 
 the stone flanks of the house with sullen thuds. They 
 evaded her for a moment, during which the storm 
 drenched her head and shoulders. On this side there was 
 no light. Far out there in the darkness stretched the 
 Philadelphia pike. It was fortunate that Mr. March did 
 not start until to-morrow. She caught the shutters and 
 drew them to their places. Asshe secured them, "Why, to 
 morrow to-morrow is Sunday," she exclaimed. " There 
 is no coach ! " 
 
 She went back into the light with a bewildering terror 
 at her heart. March, with opposite intention, had imbued 
 her with the deepest concern. Here was a loss of twenty- 
 four hours. What might not have happened in that time 
 in her father's present state ? Dr. Fleet might come too 
 late.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 125 
 
 She felt that she must see March. She looked at the 
 great sturdily-ticking clock in the corner. The painted 
 moon above the face stared at her with an insane grin, 
 but she made out that it was only half-past eleven. He 
 might not have gone to bed. She hastily lighted another 
 candle, that her father might not awake and find himself 
 in the dark, and went out into the hall. A frigid breeze, 
 that seemed to come from the furthest recesses of the 
 old house, struck her as she went forward. 
 
 She paused a moment. What was she going to ask 
 him ? She did not know. She only knew that she must 
 see him. At his door she rapped without hesitation ; 
 quietly at first, and then louder. There was no answer. 
 She stopped a moment to think. Why had he not come 
 back to tell her that no coach went ? With a sudden 
 thought she rapped more vigorously ; she smote the door 
 until her knuckles ached. Silence answered her. 
 
 At length she turned the knob hesitatingly. The door 
 opened without resistance, and she peered in. The room 
 was empty ; the bed had not been occupied. Then she 
 understood. Apparently she had more than one friend.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 EASTER SUNDAY broke warm and sultry, forewarning 
 one of those torrid days which sometimes spring out of 
 the cold heart of the northern April. The great festival 
 was heralded at dawn by the joyful note of trumpets 
 from the church tower ; and the whole congregation 
 rose, and, preceded by the children, paid their annual 
 visit to the cemetery with singing and the sound of wind 
 instruments, making melody in their hearts to the risen 
 Saviour. The air was heated and lifeless ; but later, 
 when the faithful community filed to church, it hung inert 
 about them like the breath of a furnace. At rare inter 
 vals, when the young leaves were faintly stirred, the 
 slight breeze appeared wearily far from the beholder. 
 
 Mr. Keator went scrupulously through the elaborate 
 liturgy for the day, and preached a sermon of the usual 
 length ; but the exhaustion which followed prostrated 
 him until it was time for evening service. His hearers 
 listened laboriously, and strove not to seem fatigued and 
 warm an effort in which their failure did not discredit 
 them. 
 
 Constance dozed restlessly during the morning after 
 her night watch ; and when she saw her father again she 
 was startled by the change which the heat had wrought. 
 When the sun set and the cool breeze began to breed in 
 the mountains and steal up the valley, she opened the
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 127 
 
 shutters which had been ineffectually closed against the 
 day, and sitting beside him, waved a palm-leaf gently 
 about his head. She was thinking how grieved he would 
 be to miss the Easter services ; and her thoughts went 
 back to happier Easters, when she herself had gone to 
 church joyfully with her mother, and her faith was not 
 such a wearisome, doubtful matter. Stray sentences of 
 the Moravian creed, which Mr. Keator might be reciting 
 at the moment before his congregation, flitted through 
 her mind. 
 
 " ' Who hath made us meet to be partakers of the 
 inheritance of the saints in eternity,' " she murmured, 
 absently, " ' having predestinated us unto the adoption 
 of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the 
 good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His 
 grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved.' " 
 
 The sonorous phrases left her lips thoughtfully. As 
 she finished, her voice grew louder, and at the end the 
 congregational response came feebly : 
 
 " This I verily believe." 
 
 Constance bent over the figure on the bed. 
 
 " Why, father ! " exclaimed she, softly. 
 
 He opened his eyes with a wandering look of intel 
 ligence. 
 
 " What ? Constance, Constance, did you speak ? " he 
 asked, with an effect of groping for the words. 
 
 " No, father, it was you. I was reciting the creed to 
 myself, and you made the response. You didn't know ? " 
 
 " Didn't know ? " he answered, vacantly. " The 
 creed ! " said he, suddenly, with awakened interest. 
 " The creed ! " He looked at her keenly. " Constance, 
 my girl," he asked, quite reasonably, " do you believe it ? " 
 
 " Yes, father," replied she, unhesitatingly. 
 9
 
 128 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; why not ? " He paused a moment with a 
 heavy sigh. " But there are other things." 
 
 Constance was much agitated. 
 
 " Yes, father," she answered, chokingly, " there are 
 other things." 
 
 "Ah!" cried he, gaining false strength for the 
 moment, " I was wrong to force you." 
 
 " Force me ? Ah, poor, dear father ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; I wanted to bring you into the fold. It 
 was natural ; but it was a mistake. You were good 
 enough as you were so good, dearest ! " said he, 
 reaching for her head with the old motion. 
 
 She put it down to him, and he ran his wasted hand 
 over her fair hair musingly. Then she kissed him, 
 stifling a sob, and said, 
 
 " I can't let you say that. It is not true, father. You 
 don't know." He made a weak gesture of dissent. "No, 
 no, I don't imagine. If it were true, if any one could 
 fancy it true for a moment, don't you think I would 
 rather let you rest than tell you ? Dear father," she 
 whispered, kneeling by his bed, " I've wished so that you 
 should know, and once I feared that you would never 
 wake to let me tell you. First I was afraid wickedly 
 afraid ; but that is gone. I want to say it now I must. 
 Father, listen ah, you won't believe it." 
 
 " Darling ! " With a supreme effort he drew her to 
 him and kissed her lips twice, hungrily. " Darling," he 
 whispered, as he released her, " I know." 
 
 She repeated the words breathlessly. 
 
 He nodded quickly, thrice. 
 
 " Mr. March the church Elder Weiss. Yes, yes." 
 
 " Who has told you? " she cried, bewildered. 
 
 "Cynthia," said he, with difficulty.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 129 
 
 Constance devoted a swift, grateful thought to her 
 aunt. 
 
 " I am sorry it fell out so, Constance, girl sorry for 
 you, sorry every way. But it was my fault. I should 
 have foreseen." 
 
 " Father ! You shall not blame yourself. The fault 
 was mine wholly mine ! " 
 
 He tried to frame a reply, but was silent, and Con 
 stance remorsefully told him that she had kept him 
 talking too long. She made him remain quiet, while she 
 beat and smoothed his pillow with woman's skill ; and 
 when she had settled him anew, forbade him to speak, 
 and immediately bending over him, said, softly, 
 
 " You did not speak of it, father. You called me 
 good. Have you forgiven me ? Can you ? " 
 
 " No, dear." 
 
 She shrank. Dr. Van Cleef smiled happily on her 
 from his pillow. 
 
 " There can be no such word between us. I can not 
 forgive you. I have always forgiven you. Do you 
 understand ? " 
 
 She stooped and kissed him. 
 
 He dozed for a time ; Constance fanned him pa 
 tiently. 
 
 " Constance," he called, after a little. 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 " I shall not be with you long." 
 
 " Father, father, don't ! " 
 
 She bent over him with a cry of anguish. 
 
 " Don't take it hard, dearest. It is a solemn thought, 
 but it is not bitter not bitter to me, and must not be 
 to you. You would like to keep me with you a little 
 longer, perhaps, and I yes, in my weakness I should
 
 130 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 like to stay. But if our faith has any meaning, why should 
 I fear to go ? Why should you grieve to have me go ? 
 Remember that I shall be happier. Try to think of it in 
 that way, daughter. It is a dear thought." He smiled 
 as if his eyes were smitten with sweet visions and touched 
 her head gently. 
 
 " Don't talk of death, father ! pray don't ! You will 
 grow better, you will recover." 
 
 " No, I am a physician. I have watched others in like 
 straits. My disease is peculiar ; science has much to learn 
 of it. I'm afraid we do not even name it correctly yet. 
 But the end comes suddenly. I have always expected 
 that." He spoke calmly, while she laid her face in the 
 pillow in an agony of grief. " What I wish to tell you is 
 not that not that, exactly," he went on, with his old 
 repetitive habit. " Constance, dear." She raised her 
 tear-stained face. " You will be quite alone. Your aunt, 
 I suppose, will return to her sister." 
 
 " Oh, father, let it go ! Why need you trouble ? " 
 
 " I must I must, my dear. Listen. You will be 
 alone, and you will go to your Aunt Caroline ; but 
 eventually you will marry." Constance fiercely shook 
 the head on the pillow. " Yes, yes, it is the only life for 
 a woman." He stroked her head softly. " Yes, you will 
 grieve for your old father for a time. But in the end you 
 must marry. It is that I wish to speak of. Constance, 
 did you ever think that Mr. Keator yes, yes, I see you 
 have. He is a noble man, my dear. I will not question 
 you. I will not even leave it as a wish. But I suggest 
 I merely suggest, my dear " 
 
 The gentleness which she remembered from infancy 
 in his treatment of her overcame her, and she flung her 
 arms about his neck.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 131 
 
 " Let me promise it, father ! " 
 
 " No, no ; if it makes you feel bound, I shall be sorry 
 I spoke. I don't want to tie you. Remember," he 
 gasped, faintly, in pain " remember that I thought of it. 
 That is what I should like to leave with you, dearest 
 that I thought of it." 
 
 He closed his eyes, exhausted. 
 
 " Dear father ! " 
 
 When she was told the following morning that Mr. 
 Keator wished to see her she looked thoughtfully at her 
 father. 
 
 " I will see him," she said, and after a few moments 
 went down and met him with appealing hauteur. 
 
 Surely there were matters between these two to render 
 them conscious and defeat conversation by the very 
 copiousness of the things to be said, if they permitted 
 themselves to say them. For the space of a few unman 
 ageable moments they were as far apart as if Mr. Keator 
 had remained in his study. He did not speak of the 
 scene in the church ; he talked of indifferent things. But 
 when he asked with serious concern about her father's 
 condition Constance forgot her defences and insensibly 
 drifted into the tone of frank liking and respect which 
 were always the essentials of her regard toward him, 
 whatever her immediate mood. She was nervous and 
 unstrung from long watching and anxiety for her father, 
 and she would not let him comfort her with his hopeful 
 phrases. 
 
 " Mr. Keator," she broke out, " do you believe in 
 immortality ?" 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef ! " 
 
 " Oh, I know it's horrible. I wouldn't say it if it 
 weren't," she exclaimed, hysterically.
 
 132 A VICTOR 10 US DEFEA T. 
 
 " Don't you ? " he asked, with a kind of sorrowful 
 sternness. 
 
 " Oh, I did and I do, and yet 
 
 " Yet when you are brought face to face with the ques 
 tion, when for the moment it comes home to you, you 
 find yourself faltering and wondering. Is that it ? " he 
 asked, kindly. She assented unconsciously, hanging 
 absorbed upon his words. " It is not uncommon," he 
 went on, with a far-away look in his eyes. " Every one 
 must have felt the infinitely slight distance in a way 
 between faith and no faith. It co-exists and is not at 
 war with the immensity of the difference as wide as the 
 world. It is simply ' Yes, No,' " he breathed, thought 
 fully. " Sometimes for the slightest instant it is easiest to 
 say ' No.' That comes in such a time as this for you ; it 
 rises from the very intensity of the crisis. But the soul 
 affirms, left to itself, and the ' Yes,' when you have 
 reached it, has tremendous force. The ' No ' never has 
 any force at all. In the ' Yes ' you rest and live. But I 
 didn't mean a sermon." 
 
 " No, no, you are very good. I can't thank you. 
 What you say helps me. It is so true ; and yet sometimes 
 it all goes. But you fill me with courage," she said, 
 more cheerfully. " You know Dr. Fleet is coming up," 
 added she, irrelevantly. 
 
 " Mr. March took my horse. He was to use it Sunday, 
 but I felt it was right," he said, with his native simplicity. 
 
 " Did he ? I wondered " She paused absently. 
 
 Then, " It is too much," she said. " He ought to have 
 waited for the coach." 
 
 " But your father " 
 
 " Ah, yes, father ! Yes, of course I am glad. But I 
 couldn't have let him do it."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 133 
 
 " No, he knew that. He did not give you the oppor 
 tunity," returned Mr. Keator, with the faintest smile. 
 
 " We can never repay him," she said. 
 
 Mr. Keator studied his hat. Then he looked up at 
 her with hesitating intelligence, and a wistful smile trem 
 bled upon his lips. 
 
 " Mr. Keator ! " cried she, with incrimination. 
 
 The minister blushed. 
 
 " Constance ! " he whispered. He leaned forward with 
 a sudden impulse, and as abruptly retracted his slight 
 form. 
 
 " You go very far," she said, briefly. 
 
 " I have but one thing in my thoughts ; sometimes it 
 will escape," said he. 
 
 "You ought not to see me, then." 
 
 " As you say," returned he, rising with dignity. 
 
 She was at his side as he reached the door, and 
 brought him to face her determinedly. 
 
 " You know I do not mean that," she said, with low 
 energy, taking his hand. 
 
 " No, I did not think you meant it," he answered, 
 simply, gazing longingly into her eyes as she stood before 
 him and slowly releasing her hand. 
 
 " I did not. But I was vexed. There is nothing 
 between Mr. March and me. I have told you that. There 
 is not likely to be. You have very little faith." 
 
 " That is true. But my act the act which I could not 
 reconcile it with my duty to discourage the elders in 
 was like throwing you into his arms. I felt that. I saw 
 it. But I could not do otherwise. And now I suffer 
 tortures from it. Oh, Constance," groaned he, " you 
 must bear with me. I despise myself, but I can not con 
 quer the feeling. And every thing appears to be slipping
 
 1 3 4. A VIC TO RIO US DEFEA T. 
 
 from me. My calling seems less and less related to me 
 day by day. Yet I love it. God knows I love it ! It 
 has been my life ; until you came it was the dearest thing 
 in the world to me. I can not see it go. I could not 
 leave it. It is not what it was, and yet it is a thousand 
 times more. Sometimes I fear I am neglecting the 
 Church," he said, sadly. 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; it is true. I do not put the same vigor into 
 my work." 
 
 " You have not been so well. You are not." 
 
 " Dearest, I love you, and I fear to lose you ! That is 
 my malady." 
 
 Constance reddened vividly, and looked down at the 
 foot which she swung slowly from side to side upon her 
 heel. 
 
 " Mr. Keator, you believe that I pity you ? " she said, 
 softly. 
 
 " Ah, that is not what I wish. I do not think I care 
 for your pity." 
 
 " But you credit it ? " 
 
 " Surely." 
 
 " And that I mean to be quite, quite honest about 
 about the other matter." 
 
 " You do not know ; you may think " He broke 
 
 off the irresistible cry abruptly. " I have laid the train 
 so well ! It is as if I wished it. It will affect you with 
 out your will," he said, hopelessly. 
 
 " I think not," returned Constance, quietly. " It may 
 be some satisfaction to you to know that I have refused 
 him." The dazzling light of joy that shone from his 
 deep, lustrous eyes frightened her, and she looked hastily 
 down. " I do not mean anything more," she said, quickly.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 135 
 
 " No, no ! " cried he, in a rapture whose confidence 
 appalled her and gave her an intolerable feeling of obli 
 gation to its demands upon her future. " That is enough 
 enough for the present." Then, with a self-possession 
 which baffled her, he asked : " May I see your father, 
 Miss Van Cleef ! " 
 
 As they stood thus she heard her aunt call her name 
 twice quickly from above. She left Mr. Keator standing 
 in the doorway and ran upstairs with a wild fear. Fora 
 long time she did not return. 
 
 " Father is very ill," said she, in a tense, stricken voice 
 when she came back. " He has grown much worse. 
 Will you go for Dr. Glick ? " He limped toward the 
 door and opened it, " Oh, pardon me, Mr. Keator," 
 she cried, " I forgot " 
 
 He saw that she meant his infirmity ; he looked down 
 at his crutch and shook his head with a quick smile. She 
 tried to stop him, but he was gone. 
 
 When March came up the steps, half an hour later, 
 warm and dusty, accompanied by an elderly gentleman 
 carrying a brown leather medicine-case, Mr. Keator, who 
 had returned and was sitting in the parlor, went to the 
 door and let them in. 
 
 " Are we in time ? " asked March, as he took Mr. 
 Keator's free hand. 
 
 " He is much worse." 
 
 March went rapidly up the stair, and coming down 
 again immediately, invited Dr. Fleet to accompany him 
 to the bed-chamber. The physician's step was slow and 
 heavy, like the step of fate. 
 
 For a long time Mr. Keator sat in the room in which 
 he had passed the happiest hours of his life. Their 
 ghosts seemed hovering about him now, and from time
 
 136 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 to time he let fall the volume of illustrations of Palestine 
 scenery which he was nervously fingering, and sat 
 dreamily turning over the leaves without glancing at 
 them. Occasionally a servant went stealthily up the 
 stair outside bearing warm cloths and heated water 
 in bottles. Overhead the swift footsteps were contin 
 uous. 
 
 Mr. Keator got up restlessly as night fell and went 
 down to his study ; he took out a dozen specimens from 
 his herbarium one after another and turned away from 
 them in disgust ; the servant, when she brought his tea, 
 found him endeavoring to fix his mind upon a volume of 
 sermons. He said he did not care for tea. 
 
 Then he went back and found March seated before 
 the fire which he had left. 
 
 " Dr. Van Cleef has asked for you. Will you go 
 up?" 
 
 Mr. Keator turned and ascended the stair in silence. 
 
 March waited a weary time. It was eleven o'clock, 
 and he sat musing upon a miniature which he held under 
 the light of the candelabrum, when he heard the sound 
 of Mr. Keator's crutch on the stair. He laid the min 
 iature down and went to him as he entered. 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 The minister's face wore a look of settled gloom. 
 For a moment he paused, staring dejectedly at the floor. 
 He looked up with an effort. 
 
 " It is all over. Dr. Van Cleef died half an hour 
 ago." 
 
 March went over to the mantle, and standing with his 
 arm resting on it, gazed sadly into the fire. Mr. Keator 
 took the seat the young man had left. After a moment 
 his eyes caught the miniature lying upon the table. It
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 137 
 
 was of Constance as he had first known her. He drew 
 it toward him eagerly, and sat regarding it. 
 
 " Poor girl ! " he said, at last. 
 
 March did not speak ; he was looking at the minister's 
 absorbed face.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A FORTNIGHT after her father's death Constance was 
 sitting in the arbor in the midst of the garden. Her face 
 looked wan and haggard. Contrary to the Moravian 
 custom her attire was black. The shapely cap, the col 
 lar substituted for the neckerchief, and the ruffling at her 
 wrists, which were the only points of white, rather 
 heightened the somber effect. The poor girl herself 
 looked appealingly sad. She had let fall the volume in 
 her hand and was looking vacantly toward the rich golds 
 and reds of the setting sun. Presently her eyes suf 
 fused and, reopening the book, a pretty copy of " Thomas 
 a Kempis," given her by her father, she strove to read. 
 
 The types grew blurred ; she laid the book down and 
 looked desperately at the luminous spectacle of the 
 clouds. She had come out into the garden with a hor 
 ror of the rooms within. They were all filled with a 
 thousand reminders ; the chairs, the tables, mantels, 
 pictures ; things that he had used or liked ; things that 
 he had bought for her all were vocal with his presence. 
 This presence was oftenest her joy, but at times her tor 
 ment. She had not constantly the sense of it. It came 
 and went ; and sometimes she wished that she might 
 either always feel that he was with her, or reach the 
 awful understanding of his absence. But she could not 
 bring herself to a belief in the possibility of her loss, 
 even when the void came upon her most grievously.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 139 
 
 She had lost her mother when little more than a child. 
 Her memory told her of nothing like her present feel 
 ing ; she had had at the time of her mother's death, the 
 child's unconscious hardness, its blessed insensibility ; 
 and now she sometimes thought she had the child's 
 incomprehension. Her cry as she hung above her dead 
 father had been, " It can not be ! Oh, I do not under 
 stand ! " And now she lamented constantly, " I do not 
 understand ! " 
 
 A wagon rattled down the long street ; as the sound 
 passed a boy went by whistling. " How can they ? " 
 was her thought. " How dare they ? " The world was 
 depopulated ; yet things went on as usual. 
 
 Her first intelligent feeling as she came out of the 
 unreasoning maze which followed her bereavement, had 
 been that horror of the usual, the shock of seeing the 
 world's people about the world's ordinary business. 
 When they brought her a newspaper she had secretly 
 wondered that it was still published. Such thoughts 
 came upon her from time to time irresistibly, and she 
 was glad, at the moment, of the rescue which she saw 
 coming toward her in the form of Mr. Keator. 
 
 His crutch sounded sharply on the gravel as he limped 
 down the walk. He looked more than usually slight and 
 frail as he leaned against the post at the arbor entrance, 
 his face turned half toward the mellow light, and wearing 
 the smile which he kept for her. 
 
 " Have you thought that I neglected you ? " he asked, 
 as she took his hand and motioned him to a seat oppo 
 site, on the bench which ran around the arbor within. 
 
 Constance closed her book and, setting it upright on 
 her knee, clasped both hands upon it. " No, I hadn't 
 thought that," she answered, with a quiet smile.
 
 140 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " It may have seemed strange I haven't come, but 
 but I thought I knew you." 
 
 " You were right." 
 
 " I felt that you would bear it best alone. One must 
 be very near to give real help." His voice grew husky. 
 " I feared I was not near enough," he said, so gently that 
 she scarcely heard. 
 
 " I was sure your delicacy kept you away. I know 
 you too, Mr. Keator," she said, with the ghost of a smile. 
 
 " You make me say that it was not altogether delicacy. 
 I was troubled. I had not confidence to meet you." 
 
 Constance took up some knitting which lay beside her, 
 and putting " a Kempis " aside, studied it attentively. 
 
 " I can't say how glad I am that you have found it." 
 
 " What ? " asked he, absently. 
 
 " Confidence to see me again. I depend upon your 
 visits, you know. I should not know what to do if you 
 abandoned me," she told him, seriously. 
 
 He took heart from her mood. " What can I say ? 
 You are very good." 
 
 " Am I ? By contrast, perhaps." A fly made her 
 shake her head impatiently. " I have always been so 
 far from that to you." 
 
 " I am sure you have never meant " 
 
 " To be unkind ? No, I suppose not. But it comes 
 to the same thing. If I had meant it I ought to be 
 able to find some justification for it ; but to intend the 
 best and always Ah, I have not treated you well, 
 Mr. Keator ! " She bent her head and knitted indus 
 triously. 
 
 " It has been my fault," he said, eagerly. " How 
 
 could you when " He paused, not knowing how to 
 
 continue.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 141 
 
 She was finding trouble with a dropped stitch. It was 
 quite a minute before she said, with a brave tremor in 
 her voice, as she let her knitting fall and looked up at 
 him, " Before my father died, Mr. Keator he spoke 
 of you. He said he wished " She paused to con 
 quer her tears. " Mr. March is gone. Do you remem 
 ber my saying . Mr. Keator," declared she, incoher 
 ently, " I absolve you from your promise." She took up 
 her needles hastily. 
 
 He looked at her for a moment in stupid joy and 
 wonder. Then he drew himself upon his crutch and 
 went over as swiftly as he might to where she sat blush 
 ing hotly. He took her hand unresistingly to his lips 
 and kissed it. As he let it slowly fall he sought her eye ; 
 but she would not look up. 
 
 " Ah, I had not confidence for this ! " The fond hope 
 in his pale face fascinated her as she met his gaze. For 
 a moment she was impotent to set him right. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Keator, I am afraid I do not mean as much 
 as you think." 
 
 He retreated a step on his crutch. 
 
 " What is it that you mean ? " he asked, solemnly. 
 
 " Don't make it a question : it is hard enough as it is. 
 Sit down, please, and I will try to tell you," she said, 
 gently. He found his way in a maze to his former seat. 
 For a moment he bent his always kindly gaze upon her. 
 It was richly expressive too expressive for Constance, 
 who turned away from it quickly. 
 
 " Constance," said he at length, slowly, "we must end 
 this ; I have been pained and harassed by it that is 
 nothing. But for your sake I will not go on troubling 
 you about it." 
 
 " I feel your generosity, your forbearance," exclaimed
 
 142 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Constance.. " I have always felt them. I hope I begin 
 to repay them by saying that I am inclined to obey my 
 father's wish." 
 
 She expected him to rise, to make some demonstration. 
 He merely strove to keep the fearful joy out of his eyes 
 while he asked her, " Is it more than obedience ? Do 
 you wish it ?" 
 
 " I have said that my inclination went with it," she 
 answered, reasonably. 
 
 He got up now and came over to her. 
 
 " Dearest, let us understand each other this time. Do 
 you love me ? " 
 
 " Don't ! " she begged. 
 
 A groan escaped him. " I might have known ! " 
 
 She rose suddenly and stood beside him. 
 
 " Oh give me time ! I don't know. I I must 
 examine myself. You may say I've had time ; no, not 
 really. I have always shrunk from considering it ; now 
 I will try to think " She paused, and after a moment 
 her hand stole to his shoulder. " Mr. Keator, you know 
 that I admire and respect you," she said, with a kind of 
 gentle pleading in her voice that was new to him. " I 
 feel your nobility, your goodness, your unselfishness. 
 No one could fail to feel them. But I suppose I should 
 feel them more than any one else," she said, with whim 
 sical sadness. " I should be willing to suffer all for my 
 love of them." 
 
 "Ah, Constance !" 
 
 " Mr. Keator, take me as I am ; surely if I do not feel 
 toward you as I ought, I should learn to." 
 
 He yearned toward her, but sternly forbade himself. 
 He was evidently suffering bitterly. " Why do I not ? " 
 he cried. He turned toward her with an irresistible 
 impulse.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. M3 
 
 She kept him from her with a gesture, while she pur 
 sued her thought. " Father would have had it so," she 
 murmured. " Mr. Keator," she said, hesitatingly, " let 
 us leave it with a higher wisdom. You have a custom 
 you marry by lot, do you not ? " 
 
 " It would have to be so in any event ! " said he, leap 
 ing gloomily forward with her thought. 
 
 " Would it ? then so much the better. You believe 
 that Heaven orders the result, do you not ? " appealed 
 she, with the soft dignity which was not commonly 
 opposed. But she turned away with a vivid blush as he 
 confronted her at last. 
 
 " Constance, how can I say it ? It can't be, my girl, 
 it can't be ; sit down and let me tell you." His face was 
 drawn in pain. 
 
 " We can never marry." She turned a wondering 
 face to his. " What I said to you the other day, the day 
 your poor father died, was madness. I knew it, and was 
 not able to check the sin. For the moment it ruled me ; 
 I could not get away from it. Constance, you have great 
 power over me. I did not know how much until that 
 day. It is simply this : when Elder Weiss reproved you 
 he made marriage between us impossible. You know," 
 he went on more calmly, " the presbyters of our Church 
 can not marry without the consent of the Council. The 
 Council requires certain things in a wife. One of them, 
 of course, is active membership in the Church. The 
 others I will not affront you by naming them, Con 
 stance ; but they are not broad enough to include the 
 purest angel in the world. Ah, I needn't tell you that 
 the essential thing is the scene in the Church." 
 
 " Yet you brought it about ; you forced it upon the 
 elders."
 
 1 44 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " It was my duty," he said, simply. 
 
 He put his elbows on his knees and stared at the 
 arbor floor. 
 
 " Ah, who is better than you, Mr. Keator?" she cried, 
 impetuously. "Why did I hesitate ! " He turned 
 swiftly toward her with an energy that awed and scared 
 her. 
 
 " My darling, it is not too late," he whispered, with 
 uncontrollable passion. " I can give up my ministry ; I 
 can leave the Church. Oh, the treasure of the world is 
 before me, and I deliberate. I have dared to weigh you 
 against a position, a profession. Forgive it, dearest. 
 It is only habit. It is conquered ; it is dead. Come, 
 sweet : we need not stay here ; we can go away. We can 
 be happy alone. There are many places besides this 
 places where no one knows us. We could live on an 
 island in the sea, if we must. Dear, if we love each 
 other, that is the one fact in life, and we are the only 
 two in the world. With the Church's consent or without 
 it with marriage, or without, if need be we will pass 
 what years Heaven may give us, together. Love is 
 enough. All else is foolishness. Dearest, if you truly 
 love me, this poor obstacle is no obstacle. I trample on 
 it for you. I know not what sin I would not commit 
 for you. Surely you will do so little for me ? " 
 
 She had shrunk unconsciously before the hot, resist 
 less torrent of his feeling, but as he went on she found 
 strength to measure herself and him, and she faced him, 
 as he finished, with a glory of pity in her eyes. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Keator ! I did not know that any thing 
 could lead a good man so far. And do you think I 
 would accept such a sacrifice ? Do you suppose that 
 any woman could help a man to such a fall ? You could 
 not accomplish it yourself."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 145 
 
 He raised his head which, his passion being spent, 
 hung dejected upon his breast ; but she would not suffer 
 him to speak. . 
 
 " Please do not, Mr. Keator ! you shall not give the 
 sanction of your saner speech to such madness. If you 
 care for me, let it make toward something better. You 
 say I have power with you. Ah, I know now why it 
 was given me ! It was to save you from this." 
 
 The revulsion possessed him, and from its vantage 
 ground he looked back upon his appeal as a nightmare. 
 
 "You do not say enough," he said, after a moment ; 
 " you do not deal as hardly as you ought with me." 
 
 " I have too many failures of my own to look after to 
 treat yours thoroughly. Besides," she said, after a 
 moment, " I should not dare." 
 
 " Why, Constance ? is it a feeling about my calling ? 
 Is it the old tradition of sacredness in it, of "some vir 
 tue outside the man ? Yes, yes ; I should have seen 
 more clearly, even in my passion. The ministry is not 
 like other things. It is not, as I said, a mere position, a 
 profession that I should give up for you. It is a calling, 
 a something that has its unchangeable seat in the nature 
 of the man, and its responsibilities to others than him 
 self to the whole structure of society and to God. All 
 other things a man may take up and lay down. But 
 the priestly office implies a dedication, a consecration. 
 It is a divine call ; you may answer it or not, but, having 
 answered it, it is final ; there is no retreat." 
 
 " Yes, and the world's honor of it, I suppose, comes 
 from its sense of that of its permanence, its beauty, its 
 holiness," mused Constance. " I knew you could not be 
 less than perfectly loyal. I knew I only seemed to lose 
 my ideal."
 
 146 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 A look of pain crossed his face. 
 
 " My dear girl, don't say that. Remember that you 
 can always tempt me." 
 
 He sat moodily silent for a time. 
 
 The last rays of the sun kept a faint rose hue in the 
 west. Constance's needles struck audibly on the still 
 ness with their measured click. 
 
 " Constance, do you think I could have done it ? " he 
 broke out, at last. " Your faith in me is sweet ; say 
 again you think I could not." 
 
 " I know you could not," she said, briefly. 
 
 " But if you had yielded if you pardon me ; sup 
 pose it if you had consented ? " 
 
 The contest of her needles went on for a moment like 
 a roar in his ears, and he watched her closed lips as if 
 they had been an oracle's. For that instant she hesita 
 ted ; then, 
 
 " No, not if I had yielded, not if I had consented," 
 she repeated, in a low voice. 
 
 Her tone had the weight of conviction, but the minis 
 ter was not flattered to belief. 
 
 " I don't know, I don't know," he cried, after a mo 
 ment. " Constance, after such a lapse I can never be 
 sure of myself. I shall never feel that I have surely 
 mortified the weak, sinful wishes of the flesh, unless I 
 am offered the temptation again, unless I force myself 
 to face it continuously for a long time. Do you under 
 stand ? I would be strong by challenging my weakness, 
 confronting it until it looks down ashamed. Give me 
 the opportunity. Say what you said again." 
 
 " But then I did not know that it involved " 
 
 " My calling ? No ; but now that you know, help me 
 to assure myself that that is what you think it a final 
 obstacle. Furnish me with the temptation."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 147 
 
 " You mean " She dropped her needles. " What a 
 strange idea ; wait a moment. I am trying to under 
 stand," 
 
 " You said a moment ago that your power had been 
 given to save me ; that is it ; I ask you to save my self- 
 respect." 
 
 He looked at her with a confident smile. 
 
 She took his hand. 
 
 " I will." 
 
 " Understand, dear, I ask it for some time ; is there 
 no one else, nothing to interfere ? " 
 
 " No one, nothing," she answered, looking down. 
 
 " Then promise me that if I come to you and say, ' I 
 have failed. I am less strong than I thought, I have 
 given up my ministry. I offer you a life beggared of 
 every. thing that makes life worth while, of deliberate 
 malice divorced from all good and noble things except 
 my love,' you will submit yourself, as you said, to the 
 test of the lot. Will you promise that, dear ? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " Does it seem hard ? " 
 
 " Very hard ! " owned Constance. 
 
 " Do you think me oversensitive ? Imagine like miser 
 ies think of a soldier who has turned his back on the 
 enemy. Fancy his halting in the midst of his shameful 
 retreat to wish with all his soul that he had not left the 
 faithful men struggling behind him there to fight the 
 battle without him. Would he not give all his future for 
 the right to stand with them again ? What would he not 
 barter to renew his self-respect ? That is not oversensi- 
 tiveness, do you think, Constance nor false pride ? It 
 is a bitter human need. It is the awful need of a pure 
 conscience. What do you think life would be worth to
 
 148 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 that deserter, with the knowledge always pressing home 
 upon him that he had abandoned his trust, with his heart 
 beating time eternally to the wretched inward cry of 
 ' Coward ! Coward ! ' Might he not better die if he is 
 never to win back the peace of soul which he left behind 
 him with his musket as he ran ? And then think what 
 an angel of light he would seem who should come up as 
 he stood there hesitating, and say : ' Your place in the 
 ranks is not lost yet. No one knows that you have 
 failed for this moment but me. Come back with me ! ' 
 Constance, you can be that messenger of life to me." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I see," said the girl, with a troubled look in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " I may have a more easily-tortured conscience than 
 other men ; but God knows it is slothful enough. 
 And at all events, I am quite certain that the need 
 to which I ask you to minister is not peculiar to 
 me. It is it must be universal ; else why do criminals 
 long to hold up their heads again among men ? why do 
 lost men and women spend all that is left of life in striv 
 ing for the place they have forfeited ? Is it mere pride, 
 do you think ? a wish to be well seen of men ? Then 
 repentance and reform are poor shams. If men do not 
 seek the light after the darkness because it is a condition 
 of life because they simply must be able to walk upright 
 before God and their own consciences, if they grope 
 their way toward it merely because they fancy they will 
 look better in it surely then our preaching is vain, our 
 charities are empty, and God's merciful pardon and 
 peace is offered to men unworthy of it and deaf to it." 
 
 He spoke under great excitement, and as he ended, 
 sank exhausted upon the seat from which he had risen, 
 and buried his face in his hands.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 149 
 
 Constance looked about her in perplexity. 
 
 " I don't know what to say," she exclaimed, at length. 
 
 He raised his head. 
 
 " Do not say anything that you will be sorry for. I 
 would not have you do that to save me from the tor 
 tures of the lost. But, dear, you know* I would not 
 ask you for a thing for my own selfish good that could 
 harm you. I do not dare say it is a mere form ; for I 
 need to rest myself upon your firm promise. But you 
 have known me a long time. I think I may fearlessly 
 challenge my past life. Is there anything in it to make 
 you fear my failure ? anything but my madness 
 to-day ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " 
 
 " Then I ask you, as friend asking friend, to help 
 me ; not urging it I would rather die. But stating 
 the case fairly and leaving it with you." 
 
 Constance had at the moment an irrelevant memory 
 of what she had once said to herself that she would 
 sacrifice much to do him a service. Surely this was a 
 very small sacrifice if she had faith in him. 
 
 " Constance," he went on, " it is the condition of my 
 life. I can not live knowing that I could be guilty of 
 such an atrocity. It is asking a great deal and you owe 
 me nothing but I am content to abase myself so far as 
 to accept such generosity. You hold help in your hands ; 
 will you give it to me ? " 
 
 " Would father have wished it ? " 
 
 For a moment the minister kept a pained silence. 
 
 " I do not know," he said, at length, quickly, as if 
 fleeing temptation. 
 
 " You know that if you asked me now, no considera 
 tion in the world would cause me to consent ? "
 
 150 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 "Yes, I know that." 
 
 "You understand that if I promise it is because I 
 have implicit faith that you will never put me to the 
 test ? " 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 " Then, Mr.- Keator, I shall be very glad to do it for 
 you," she said, in a low voice. 
 
 " For how long shall it be ? " 
 
 " Shall we say a year ? " she suggested, kindly. 
 
 " You are generous," said he ; "a shorter time would 
 serve."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MR. KEATOR left Constance then ; and when he came 
 again they did not speak of this compact. Constance 
 had her own difficulties, and after they had discussed 
 the near and natural topics growing out of every-day 
 life and relations, which seem to be as necessarily pre 
 liminary to serious talk as a penman's flourishes to actual 
 writing, she asked him if she might trouble him about 
 some of them. 
 
 " You know, Mr. Keator," she said, with a kind of 
 melancholy, " I am what would be called rich. Dear 
 father left me every thing. Of course he wished some 
 thing to go to the Church, but he said he preferred that 
 as it was to come from my portion, I should decide how 
 much and the way in which it should be applied. His 
 his delicacy," she added, shyly, " puts it in my power to 
 show the Church that I have the best will toward it." 
 
 " It was not needed, but we shall be very glad of 
 any thing that you may choose to do," returned he, 
 formally. 
 
 They were in the garden again, for Constance found 
 herself unable to talk to any one in the house. 
 
 " Then, if you will let me suggest," she went on, " I 
 have thought that I should like to deposit with your 
 board of missions, or whatever you call it, a sum that 
 would produce from year to year enough to sustain an 
 additional missionary at your station in the West Indies. 
 Does that seem practical ? Is it foolish, is it absurd ? 
 Tell me, Mr. Keator. I don't know. I only know what
 
 152 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Mr. March has told me." Mr. Keator paled. " He says 
 the poor people there are in a wretched way. I only 
 suggest that because I feel a kind of acquaintance and 
 sympathy with them from what he has said. But if there 
 is anything else if you know something more urgent " 
 It was strange to see her defer so to him. 
 
 " No, no, there is nothing else," interposed he, hastily ; 
 " that is a worthy object," he added, quaintly, in the 
 pulpit phrase. 
 
 " And then," she went on calmly, not noting his agita 
 tion, " I wish to build a hospital here in Judea as a 
 memorial of father." 
 
 " That would be costly. You probably do not know 
 how costly. We could not accept such a gift." 
 
 " Nevertheless I shall build the hospital." 
 
 "Ah, well !" 
 
 They had drifted toward the arbor and now entered 
 it. Mr. Keator looked about him as he sat down. 
 He let his memory-filled eyes fall upon Constance. 
 With compassionate intuition of the bitter recollections 
 which this little structure must call up in him, she went 
 on, hastily, " And I shall trust to your judgment and 
 experience to teach me the best way to do it." She was 
 not so tactless as to use the false consideration for his 
 feelings involved in such an open recognition of it as 
 leaving the arbor. Instead, she continued, gayly, " Shall 
 it be built in separate cottages or in a single structure ? 
 Shall it be stone or wood ? Shall we put a gambrel or a 
 gable roof on it ? What rooms shall we reserve for the 
 nurses ? How shall the wards be arranged ? Those are 
 things I want to talk over with you." 
 
 " You have considered everything. Nothing is left," 
 he said, with a yielding smile.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 153 
 
 " No ; I have only considered the considerations. I 
 am going to ask you to decide." They fell into a talk 
 about architecture, in which they relied, perhaps, rather 
 upon taste than knowledge, and finally, when there still 
 seemed a little left to say, and the subject, therefore, 
 could be decently abandoned, " Mr. March went away 
 suddenly," remarked Constance. 
 
 " Yes," returned Mr. Keator. " His brother was 
 seriously ill and his mother prostrated by it. He had 
 a letter and felt he must go at once to catch the packet 
 sailing the first of the month. He would not disturb you 
 in your grief to say a hurried good-bye." Constance 
 turned away with the sudden tremor that she had not 
 yet learned to conquer at the suggestion of her loss, and 
 rising after a moment, went outside the arbor and 
 thoughtfully plucked a rose from the richly blossomed 
 bush that climbed the lattice work. " He had a feeling, 
 too, I suppose," pursued the minister, keeping his place, 
 " about receiving your thanks. He commissioned me to 
 say all that was proper, and especially to thank you for 
 your hospitality, on which he seemed to think he had 
 trespassed. I am glad you spoke of it. I was near for 
 getting it." She made no comment, but stood with the 
 scentless rose to her nostrils, looking up at the profuse 
 crimson bloom on which the refracted light of the van 
 ished sun fell coldly. He rose and came out to her. 
 
 " Mr. Keator," she said, " there is one thing the chief 
 thing I have wished to ask you about " 
 
 " Well ? " he responded, kindly. 
 
 " It's not easy to say or explain." She paused, and 
 let her doubtful glance fall upon' the rose bush once 
 more. " Mr. Keator," she burst out, suddenly, " can 
 you imagine that that all that has happened ; not only
 
 154 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 poor father's death ; though that, of course, first but 
 the the occurrence in the church and all, have helped 
 me to a new view of sorrue things, have given me certain 
 new wishes ? " She paused, but she did not seem to 
 desire an answer and the minister kept silence as she 
 looked, unseeing, toward the faintly lighted West. " I 
 would like to be good," she said, " that is all good as 
 my dear father was good, as you are good, Mr. Keator." 
 
 " You know what I would say," exclaimed he. 
 
 " Yes, I know," answered she, soberly, " but that is 
 not true. In the Church sense I am not good, and what 
 shall I do ? That is what I wish to ask you," she con 
 tinued, calmly. 
 
 " What should you say ? " asked he, as helplessly as if 
 he had never ministered to one in like trouble. 
 
 " Why, I want to know if I had not better enter the 
 convent at Ephrata ? " 
 
 She spoke of it with an innocent reverence singularly 
 unlike her treatment of other things. The Protestant 
 convent was also a monastery, and was the refuge of a 
 scanty sect not unlike the Moravians. 
 
 " My poor girl ! what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Is it so impossible ? " She sniffed the rose faintly. 
 
 " Not impossible ; but foolish, if you will let me say it 
 of an intention springing from so good and commendable 
 a wish. You have some theory of remorse about your 
 father : that you did not join the Church during his life, 
 that it found occasion to reprove you those things. 
 You do not deny that ? " 
 
 " No," said she, staring again at the roses with the 
 sad, remote look that the mention of these things always 
 brought into her face. 
 
 " And for that you would shut up your life to the pur-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 155 
 
 suit of a futility ? My dear girl, the conventual life is a 
 fanaticism leading to doubtful personal good and not 
 justifying itself in labors for the good of others. I 
 sometimes think the convent wall a selfish fence, ena 
 bling a skulking from duty to one's neighbor." 
 
 " But the vows there are not binding. J could come 
 out when I chose." 
 
 " My child, why should you ever enter ? No ! If 
 you think that you are not good enough and, of course," 
 he told her with a smile, " I am bound to teach that you 
 are unregenerate do good. Surely you will do some 
 thing if you build this hospital and endow the missionary. 
 And after that, in this sorrowful world, there is always 
 enough suffering to cure, if you will." 
 
 " Ah, that is true ! Perhaps, after all, I may best go 
 to Aunt Caroline, as father said." 
 
 He regarded her for an instant in amazement. The 
 swiftness of her decision startled him. " Nothing could 
 be better," agreed he, quietly, after a moment. 
 
 " Perhaps he would not have liked the convent," she 
 said, softly, as if mentally settling a question that had 
 harassed her ; and the whole proposition was at once as 
 if it had never been. 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef, it is not Church wisdom, but have 
 you ever tried letting yourself go ? " 
 
 She smiled at him silently. 
 
 " Let yourself go sometime," he advised, with a nod 
 and his gentle smile ; and he felt extraordinarily worldly 
 as he walked up the path with her. 
 
 She wrote her aunt and received in reply to her tenta 
 tive proposal such a large-hearted, cheering letter over 
 brimming with motherliness and welcome as gave the 
 friendless girl happy confidence about her future ; and
 
 156 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 there was, therefore, no fear of a dubious reception to 
 cast her back upon the secure, if barren life, which she 
 might continue to live in Judea. The prospect was 
 pleasant. She wished the retrospect were half so agree 
 able. When she came to make ready to go, she found 
 this uprooting of old ties instructive. It caused her to 
 sit down in the midst of the remains of her past life, and 
 take that general account, that large view, impossible 
 while she was still living it. It occurred to her that her 
 disasters and sorrows were more or less remotely refer 
 able to her pride, and she resolved to humble and sub 
 mit herself. It was a capital opportunity to begin 
 anew. 
 
 As the time which she had set for her departure drew 
 near, the thought of it began to have an unaccountable 
 pain for her. She had not supposed the Moravian 
 village in any way dear to her ; but it is impossible that 
 one should fail to send forth some creepers in four years, 
 and she found them clinging in unexpected spots, and 
 with curious tenacity. She discovered that, independent 
 of Sister Zelda, she had more genuine friends among the 
 sisters and brethren than she supposed, and as they 
 came from day to day to bid her farewell, she did not 
 cheapen the worth of their genuine friendship in her 
 heart, and the sense of its value was one of the things 
 which made it hard to go. Her least manageable regret, 
 however, was for the old house and her father's beloved 
 garden. The latter she arranged, should be kept scru 
 pulously by the same man he had chosen, and on the 
 day that she went about to bid it adieu, she felt gladly, 
 as she saw it through her tears, that if he could come 
 back, he would not find it less beautiful, less carefully 
 kept than he would wish. The house she had persist-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 157 
 
 ently declined, against all thrifty advice, to sell. She 
 had offered it first to her Aunt Cynthia as an abode for 
 herself while she lived. For the only time since her 
 brother's burial, and for the third time in her adult life 
 the first being a tribute to the memory of the poor fel 
 low who, coming home to marry her, was lost at sea 
 Miss Cynthia allowed herself to weep a little silently. 
 Then she kissed Constance with affection. 
 
 " I have not understood you, dear," she said, as she 
 let a warm drop fall upon her withered cheek. " I have 
 only been learning to know you within the last few weeks, 
 since since brother's death." 
 
 A look of anguish passed over her face which threat 
 ened a real convulsion ; she controlled it so that Con 
 stance only saw a mild, momentary flutter of the moist 
 eye-lids. 
 
 " You are a good child. You were always good to 
 him, and now you are very kind to me. But I can not 
 take it. What could a poor, faded woman do with such 
 a place, and all alone ? It is true I have friends yes, 
 many, many true, unselfish friends ; some of them might 
 stay with me. But it is better that I should go back to 
 Sister Maria, in New York. She, too, is all alone. I 
 should never have left her if it had not been for your 
 father." 
 
 But, though the house must stand idle and untenanted, 
 Constance did not halt in her purpose to keep it, and 
 she finally went away, leaving its dear old furniture, its 
 memories of agreeable hours, its sacred associations, to 
 console and mingle with one another, unfriended by the 
 echo of any footstep but that of the ancient German 
 gardener who had promised to look in occasionally. 
 
 Mr. Keator limped down to the starting place of the
 
 158 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 coach, to see her and Miss Cynthia go. When he had 
 made his adieux to the latter, he came around on the 
 other side where Constance sat. 
 
 " I shall see you again before very long ? " he asked, as 
 he took her hand. 
 
 " Yes, yes," returned she, hastily, with a vague glim 
 mer of tears in her eyes for the situation rather than 
 for her thought of the minister. " I shall come back to 
 look after the hospital." 
 
 They were silent a moment. 
 
 " You do not wish me to stay ? you are glad that I am 
 doing this ? " she asked, with a sudden impulse, under 
 cover of the loading of luggage, the talk of hostlers, and 
 the stamp of the horses. 
 
 " No, no ! it is best so. I do not wish too much 
 temptation." 
 
 She looked thoughtfully at him. 
 
 " You must not fail," she said, with a light of serene 
 trust in her eyes. She smiled softly at him. 
 
 " Not while you keep your faith in me," he whispered. 
 
 He put up his hand again for farewell, the landlord of 
 the inn gave his last message to the driver, and the coach 
 rolled off, while Mr. Keator stood with his head bared, 
 gazing at a cloud of dust. 
 
 At the city to which they came that evening, Con 
 stance's way and Miss Cynthia's diverged. They spent 
 the night here, and upon awakening the following morn 
 ing, they bade each other a farewell, in which the val 
 iant affection that had of late grown up between them 
 was at no pains to hide itself. 
 
 Constance experienced a joyful sensation of freedom, 
 for which she presently reproved herself, as the coach 
 left the city and turned southward. It was true that she
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 159 
 
 was going in a direction opposite from New York, but she 
 was also going to her mother's sister, of whom, though 
 she had never seen her, she felt perfectly sure in advance. 
 She was also not without unsatisfied desires for travel and 
 exploration, as she had told March, and the South had 
 always held an honorable place in her imagination. It 
 was true that Maryland was not very far south, and that 
 Quinnimont only narrowly kept its place on the boundary 
 of that excessively bounded State ; but to her strictly- 
 bred northern idea it was to all intents semi-tropical, and 
 at least she was not disappointed in the southern warmth 
 of the greeting of her aunt's family, who had assembled 
 in the wide, bright hallway of their home to do her honor. 
 
 " Oh, aunt ! " she cried, in happy tears, as she was 
 folded tightly in certain capacious arms, and patted and 
 rocked to and fro for a moment. 
 
 " My poor girl ! " 
 
 Being released, she was made known in turn to three 
 luminous-eyed young girls, whose pure, clear cheeks and 
 brows shone under the southern abundance of black 
 hair. Having gone to their successive embraces, the cere 
 mony of introduction to her uncle, who kissed her, and 
 his son, a straight, tall young man, who shook hands with 
 her warmly, was accomplished, and they all went into the 
 dining-room. 
 
 " I thought you would not care to go up stairs ; you 
 must be hungry," said Mrs. Echols, in the vibrant, melo 
 dious southern voice. 
 
 " I am not very hungry," she said, drawing off her 
 gloves. 
 
 She felt a pleasurable excitement. Mrs. Echols let her 
 keep her hat upon her crumpled hair, and made her sit 
 by her side at the long table, saying as she poured tea, 
 ii
 
 160 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " We thought it would be pleasanter to wait on you 
 and have tea all together we take it rather late, you 
 know ; we weren't right sure you would come ; but Mr. 
 Echols thought we had better take the chance. And we 
 are certainly glad to see you, my dear," she said, giving 
 the intensive its peculiar Virginia emphasis and value, for 
 Mrs. Echols was not a native of Maryland. 
 
 " Yes indeed ! " exclaimed one of the girls. 
 
 " What shall I put in your tea ? " asked her aunt, as the 
 talk became general. 
 
 The table was almost overladen with every species of 
 warm bread, conserve and cake. Little crochetted white 
 mats intervened between the plates and the otherwise 
 uncovered board. Two negro boys went deliberately 
 about answering the commands of the girls and Mrs. 
 Echols, which were oftenest to offer something to 
 Constance ; at other times they stood vacantly still. 
 
 Constance looked interestedly about the table ; the girls 
 amiably returned her vague smile, and she felt a sudden 
 and wholly unusual liking for the quiet, sweet, serious 
 face of the eldest, who sat next her father at the further 
 end of the table. Unlike her, the two other girls were not 
 tall, and their forms were of the generous southern type. 
 Jacinth had the delicate, clear-cut northern features of 
 her father. Her hair was worn drawn straight back from 
 her forehead in the trying classical manner, and her effect 
 was altogether simple, direct and charming. 
 
 Helen and Ethel had sweet, round faces, from which 
 their bright, restless eyes looked good-humoredly out 
 upon a world which they seemed to find agreeable. 
 Their father's slim person confronted them from the foot 
 of the table. From time to time as he talked, his keen, 
 gentle face relaxed, and his dry, shaven lips wrinkled in
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 161 
 
 a fine smile. In the custom of the day he wore no beard, 
 and the crisp lines of his visage were unconcealed. He 
 talked to Constance in a rapid, facile way, and they all 
 joined in an obvious effort to give her generous welcome, 
 and to make the desolate girl forget that she had not 
 always known them. It seemed to Constance that she 
 was compassed about with friendliness, with sympathy, 
 with secure repose. She looked forward to many happy 
 days made vital by the charitable labors which she hoped 
 to emerge from this peaceful citadel to accomplish. 
 
 She felt like crying for happiness, and instead she 
 laughed with these kind people as she had not laughed 
 since her father's death. 
 
 When her aunt came to her room to bid her good-night, 
 she fell upon her neck, and tried to whisper her gratitude, 
 and then she said she feared she must have seemed 
 wickedly happy. Mrs. Echols smiled with a thoughtful 
 sympathy in her eyes, telling her that was impossible, and 
 adding kindly that " whatever we might wish, we should 
 not let the dead always shadow our lives. The living 
 had rights as well." 
 
 " Ah ! you did not know my father," exclaimed Con 
 stance. 
 
 " No, no, dear, and I can not presume to touch your 
 grief ; only remember that the world was not made for 
 that. We were meant to be happy here, whatever the 
 cynics say. If we are not the blame is ours. Good 
 night," she added, and kissed her again. 
 
 Mrs. Echols was of a comfortable motherly figure ; 
 her gray hair was dressed upon little combs and hung 
 in puffs above her ears, while its unfailing abundance was 
 caught up behind in a large coil. Constance looked 
 after her with a spontaneous love in her eyes,whichshe re-
 
 1 62 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 membered awarding to very few on such an acquaintance. 
 " We were meant to be happy here." Her own narrow 
 experience, she reflected with melancholy, did not sanc 
 tion the theory. But it was certainly a pleasant and flat 
 tering one. Apparently her aunt's family accepted it in 
 good faith. They were, at least, a delightful exemplifi 
 cation of its efficacy, and Constance fell asleep with a 
 wandering memory of similar expressions of Mr. March. 
 
 Quinnimont lay with the early sun bright on its white 
 dwellings and spires as she came out alone upon the 
 deep piazza, with its robust Corinthian pillars next morn 
 ing. The house stood on a leafy eminence without the 
 town, and Quinnimont was in a wide, cultured valley. 
 Just below her she perceived a small lake. A cool breeze, 
 sprung from the mountains that fringed the horizon, 
 swept the broad plain and the lake, and played with the 
 errant strands of her hair. 
 
 " How much you look like your mother ! " exclaimed 
 her aunt in the breakfast-room, as she took her cheeks 
 between her hands and kissed her good morning. 
 
 " Do I ? " asked Constance, joyfully. " Father used to 
 say so." 
 
 The girls came down one by one arrayed in the invari 
 able southern morning dress of white, winning the eye 
 with its laundered freshness, and greeted her with the 
 same gentle good will. She began to feel that she was 
 to find, not mere shelter, but a home among these amiable 
 kinswomen and kinsmen she added, when she had 
 talked with her uncle for some time after breakfast, 
 and had been driven to Quinnimont by Arthur, his 
 son. 
 
 During the day her aunt and the girls showed her the 
 house, which rather astonished her by its vastness. The
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 163 
 
 great hall was in itself an immense apartment. A com 
 pany of horse might almost have manoeuvred in it. The 
 innumerable rooms gave one a sense of freedom and 
 spaciousness commonly reserved for buildings of more 
 public use. Yet it was all very home-like, and the rooms 
 were richly decorated in the taste of the day. The claw- 
 foot secretaries and book-cases were massively embroid 
 ered in brass; the furniture glistened with the double 
 lustre of hair-cloth and mahogany. On the walls there 
 were some good engravings of intolerable subjects. Of 
 these the grimmest was a series of representations of a 
 variety of future states, and the most lightsome an alle 
 gory, in four pieces, of the seasons in the life of man. In 
 a corner of the drawing room hung a brave colored like 
 ness of the Prince of Wales in the unapproachable jaunti- 
 ness of Highland costume, and above, a portrait of his 
 rare father in the kingly robes. The inoffensive little 
 girl with a kitten in her arms was there, and she smiled 
 meekly at her brother opposite, arrayed in sailor costume 
 and roiling a swollen hoop. Above the harpsichord was 
 disposed a pair of curious bas-reliefs in copper, portray 
 ing certain terror-spreading Indian chiefs in the French- 
 Indian wars. Two lugubrious ladies in worsted were 
 represented visiting the willow-shadowed tomb of Wash 
 ington. There was, of course, a profusion of family 
 portraits, for the most part excellent, to be dimly seen at 
 this time through their summer defence of gauze. Among 
 these was the notable figure of Mrs. Echols's father in the 
 Continental uniform. The bare, polished floors were 
 strewn with Indian rugs, which one of Mr. Echols's sea 
 faring friends had brought home to him, and from the 
 same source were various strangely wrought daggers and 
 ivory puzzles. Mr. Echols, as a New Englander, had the
 
 1 64 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 northern habit of reading, and his library was good. In 
 the drawing room the tables were covered with English 
 periodicals and newspapers, as well as the Baltimore and 
 Philadelphia journals. 
 
 Constance stole out alone after supper into the grounds 
 and wandered among the big, arching trees, which let the 
 moonlight through their occasional openings to illumine 
 her thoughtful, happy face. She was glad to snatch a 
 few moments of solitude that she might feel to the full the 
 blessed reality of this refuge for her sad heart. Yet it 
 pleased her to see Jacinth walking over the lawn after a 
 few moments, and coming toward her. Constance's quick 
 liking for her face when they had first met, had been 
 confirmed ; but she had not yet talked alone with her. 
 She came out of the shadow of the trees now, and made 
 herself known. 
 
 " We wondered where you had gone," said Jacinth, as 
 they met. " But I hadn't come to look for you. It's 
 sometimes so much pleasanter to be alone." 
 
 " That depends on what company one gives up for 
 solitude, doesn't it ? " asked Constance, smiling. 
 
 " Not always, I think," returned Jacinth, gently. " Our 
 best friends are no better intruders on some of our moods 
 than enemies." 
 
 They walked on in the moonlight away from the house. 
 Friendly chemical elements have no formalities to dis 
 charge before mingling ; and an hour may be as fruitful 
 as a lifetime in uniting sympathetic spirits. So it hap 
 pened that these young cousins, more surely affiliated by 
 common feelings than by common blood, drew near each 
 other. 
 
 The possession of a girl friend was an almost wholly 
 fresh experience to Constance, and at the time a singu-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 165 
 
 larly wholesome one, for it took her out of herself and 
 helped her to begin to people anew the world out of 
 which her father had gone. But it was sweeter to her, 
 because more like her dear father himself, to find out a 
 friend in Mr. Echols. Few things had ever seemed more 
 charming to Constance, than his humorous goodness, 
 gentleness, and wisdom. She had known others blessed 
 with humorous perception, a great many with the talent 
 of saying clever things ; but those faculties, it seemed to 
 her, were as far as possible beneath the supreme grace of 
 living humorously. She rather enjoyed thinking that 
 every one would not understand this last venturesome 
 phrase if she were to use it ; but she had neither a wish 
 to make her thought public, nor much desire to go far in 
 attempting to describe to herself the source of her uncle's 
 charm. She preferred to rejoice inwardly in her growing 
 understanding of a good man in whom humor was not 
 only the shrewd friend of all the virtues, but seemed to 
 be the parent of his most lovable traits. 
 
 Mr. Echols was seldom merely witty, but he was full 
 of droll whimseys which he enjoyed making Constance 
 acquainted with when they began to find themselves sym 
 pathetic spirits. She discovered him upon the portico 
 one morning, before breakfast, studying a map which lay 
 on a chair before him. 
 
 " Do you ever fish, Constance?" he asked, with twink 
 ling eyes, as she came toward him. 
 
 " No, uncle," returned she. " Why ? " She smiled in 
 anticipation. 
 
 " Why, I do, and I want your company." 
 
 " You, uncle ? I didn't know you were strong enough 
 for long tramps." 
 
 " I'm not. The thought does credit to your discern-
 
 1 66 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 ment. That is the reason I fish at home. Take a seat, 
 my dear." 
 
 Constance took one of the chairs on the piazza with a 
 vague smile. 
 
 He unfolded the map, on which Maryland, Pennsyl 
 vania, New Jersey and Delaware were represented at 
 large, and spread it on a table before them. Constance 
 began to understand. 
 
 " I can't physically, ' go fishing,' as the expression is, 
 so I make excursions in fancy. You've no idea what 
 long tramps I take on the map with the precious 
 advantage that I return home as fresh as when I started." 
 
 " Do you catch anything ? " asked Constance, amused. 
 
 " Everything. Don't you see what a field it opens ? 
 I catch excellent brook trout in this stream you see run 
 ning down through southern Pennsylvania. There are 
 some very good small fish nearer home, in the Antietam. 
 In season I am highlysuccessful with shad in the Potomac. 
 And the Chesapeake ! I find everything there, though 
 it's a rather long jaunt. Suppose we try a cast after 
 breakfast ? " 
 
 " But I'm not an enthusiast. I'm afraid I should be 
 tired before the day is out," laughed Constance, finding 
 this admirable fooling. 
 
 " Pooh !' pooh ! You don't suppose I give the day to 
 it ; I've other things to do. No, by my method I take a 
 long day's fishing in half an hour. I can get a pretty 
 full week out of a morning." 
 
 " Ah, then," cried the girl, " let us start at once ! If 
 we waited until after breakfast we should have time to 
 exhaust the Potomac, and that would scarcely be fair to 
 the other fishermen ! " 
 
 After this they often went on brief piscatorical excur-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 167 
 
 sions, and when later they went gunning instead, their 
 success was phenomenal. 
 
 When Mr. Echols went to Quinnimont to play chess 
 at his club, she drove him in the pony carriage which she 
 presently purchased for her own use. While he played, 
 she went about on her own missionary errands among the 
 poor of the place, who soon became her fast adherents. 
 Her charity was indeed a more availing and less spas 
 modic matter than it had been in Judea, and she was 
 presently known in Quinnimont as having accomplished a 
 genuine and important work. In the drives home they 
 chatted of an immense variety of things. Mr. Echols 
 had been a wide traveller and talked very well of his 
 travels, as indeed he did of all things. 
 
 In the evening, when they all gathered in the drawing 
 room, he read to them in his gentle, sonorous voice, or 
 oftener played a rubber at whist with them, or at cribbage 
 with Constance alone. 
 
 In the midst of this happy life Constance often gave 
 backward thoughts to days which seemed strangely unre 
 lated to the present. She could very well have believed 
 that many things which she remembered had happened to 
 some other girl whom she knew and felt an interest in. 
 One thing, which she still never recalled without a shame 
 ful blush, she would have gladly transferred to another's 
 memory and conscience, but the recollection of it dwelt in 
 her with an anguishing pang, and this, with the thought 
 of her father become a less prominent but not less 
 poignant thought were the only failures in her bliss. 
 
 Occasionally she devoted a faintly remorseful glance 
 to March. The shame and mortification which he had 
 generously forborne to let her see must have been keen 
 enough. She wished that he had given her opportunity to
 
 1 68 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 say her gratitude, to beg forgiveness for the self-will that 
 had brought him such pain. But in her most enlightened 
 moments she doubted whether she would have given 
 expression to these feelings if his departure had been less 
 hasty. March had never been to her quite as other men. 
 She was aware that there were things which she could 
 not say to him. And now a wall seemed to be building 
 itself between her and her past life. When she climbed 
 up occasionally to take a peep, she hastily got down, 
 shuddering. The memory of her treatment of him was 
 one of the things that made her retrospects brief. As she 
 looked back at her whole relation with him, despite certain 
 golden reminiscences, which she knew not where else to 
 parallel, it took on an intolerable aspect. Of one thing 
 she was clear : whatever she might once have spurred 
 herself to do, she should not be able to speak of these 
 things if she saw him again. The futility of fortifying 
 herself in advance against a meeting so impossible sud 
 denly touched her humorous sense, and she found it 
 worth laughing at. 
 
 A moment later she said to herself that destinies so 
 intimately mingled did not disentangle themselves with 
 facility. Fate was an ironical dame ; but her irony did 
 not go so far. It was impossible.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IT was some months later, as she sat one day sewing 
 with her aunt, that the card of a visitor was brought to 
 her. 
 
 " Say that I can't see any one," she said. Then, 
 glancing at the card, her face brightened. " Tell him I 
 will be down at once." 
 
 Frederick Lincoln rose with a glad smile on his hand 
 some face as she entered, and tried to say how much it 
 rejoiced him to see her again. He was evidently sincere, 
 and Constance, on her part, felt the kind of pleasure in 
 his presence which a breath of the sophisticated, in 
 structed, refined, faintly artificial city air had always given 
 her since she had left New York. The thought of it all 
 came back to her with a rush, and in a moment she was 
 being borne along upon fragrant, memorial clouds. The 
 life, the traditions and sentiments of which she had been 
 so intimately part, returned to her for the instant as if 
 she had never broken with them. 
 
 The young man's dress emphasized his urban manner. 
 It was irreproachable, according to the fashion of the 
 day ; but his lofty collar, the stock, the elaborately ruf 
 fled shirt, and his fob, so far from appearing irrelevant 
 spangles, seemed, as he wore them, the inevitable adorn 
 ments of a gentleman. He was not tall, and for a young 
 man, rather stout. His fair hair was cut close about a
 
 170 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 well-made head. He had a prominent forehead, and 
 large, alert, roving eyes shaded by glasses which in his 
 case had the distinguishing effect. They sat upon a nose, 
 the slight lateral curve of which, due to an accident in 
 childhood, was not without the charm attaching to more 
 heroic scars. When wonted to it one found himself 
 liking it. He kept his hat in his hand and tapped his 
 knee lightly with it as he talked. 
 
 " You will pardon me, Miss Constance," he said, as he 
 seated himself after their greeting, " if I make the 
 inane traditional remark that you have grown ; and you 
 won't expect me to add that you ' feature ' your cousin 
 or your grandfather ? " 
 
 He sat smiling at her with great amiability ; and a look 
 of ready tolerance for all the world. 
 
 " Yes, I've grown," assented Constance, giving his 
 smile back, joyously. "You have given me time." 
 
 " Oh, I protest ! It is a long while since you came 
 down here in the coach, or you wouldn't say that. You 
 have ceased to be physically reminded of the rocks and 
 bumps and hollows. For my part, I am kept in remem 
 brance of them." 
 
 " It is some time since I left New York," musingly 
 agreed Constance, giving reins to her memory. " I 
 wonder you recall me. So much must have happened 
 since then in the city. It is like a deposit of geological 
 drift on the memory of people who haven't been there in 
 four years. You were courageous to dig through to me, 
 Mr. Lincoln." 
 
 " I have always thought of you, Miss Constance," he 
 answered her, reproachfully. " We were neither of us 
 very old when we knew each other so well," said he, with 
 the easy scorn of a young man of twenty-five for himself
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 171 
 
 at twenty-one. " But we enjoyed ourselves, I suppose, 
 just as well as if we had known more ; or, at least," he 
 made haste to add, with a smile of humorous apology, 
 " I did." 
 
 " Those were very happy days," said Constance, with 
 unconscious wistfulness. " I have liked to think of them, 
 to continue them in imagination. Do you remember the 
 pleasant things that we used to do ? " 
 
 " There were a great many of them." 
 
 " Yes, were there not ? The long drives to King's 
 Bridge, the ices at Barriere's, the skating and the theatre. 
 Do you recall the night we saw Mr. Cooper as Hamlet ? 
 I have always remembered that. He was capital, I 
 thought, then." 
 
 " And the routs at Mrs. Schenk's and Mrs. Vander- 
 pool's up in Second Avenue, and that generous fellow's 
 what was his name? bachelor, sister received with 
 him " 
 
 " De Ranke ? " 
 
 " De Ranke ; that's it ! " 
 
 The topic proved fruitful, and they gave themselves 
 up interestedly to the discussion of these reminiscences 
 for a long time. At length, when a pause fell : 
 
 " I wonder if you can tell me where I shall find a 
 friend of mine, who is also a friend of yours ? " asked 
 Lincoln. 
 
 " I don't know," returned Constance, still smiling at 
 something they had just been saying, and bringing her 
 self to the consideration of his question with an effort 
 " Whom ? " 
 
 " Owen March." 
 
 " Owen March ! Why, do you know Mr. March ? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 1 72 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " But he never told me." 
 
 " Indeed ? You must have been at a loss to explain 
 my presence here, then." 
 
 Constance put her hand to her mouth and permitted 
 herself a joyous laugh. 
 
 " Hopelessly ! " 
 
 Lincoln promptly joined her. 
 
 " That is not bad. Don't suppose my stupidity has 
 increased in proportion to the time since we met. I was 
 thinking of March." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " I am to pass my vacation with him. But first I came 
 here. I remembered that I should see you." 
 
 " Ah, that is better ! But I don't know why you should 
 suppose me acquainted with Mr. March's whereabouts. 
 He is a great way from here. I can tell you that." 
 
 " Oh, not so far, I think, unless my geography is all 
 out. What county is this ? Everything goes by counties 
 in the South." 
 
 " I can't say, I'm sure but Mr. March is not in it, if 
 you mean that. He is in England." 
 
 " He was. But haven't you heard ? " 
 
 She looked at him curiously and passed her handker 
 chief quickly over her lips. 
 
 " I suppose not," said she, smiling. " Do I look 
 intelligent ? " 
 
 " Why, he only went over on account of his brother, 
 you know. After his death " 
 
 " He is dead, then his brother ? I am very sorry." 
 
 " I don't know that you need be. He was a poor fel 
 low, I fancy. The younger son was the favorite. Sir 
 John was greatly grieved when he came over here ; but 
 he took it very well. He thought it a queer whim."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT 173 
 
 " Did you ? " she asked. 
 
 " I ? Oh, I don't know. Yes, I thought it a little odd. 
 Well, it is odd. The younger sons of baronets don't 
 become dissatisfied with the run of things in their native 
 land and come across to see what they can do for their 
 fellow-unfortunates often at least, not every day, you 
 know." 
 
 " Yes, I know. I always liked it in him that he had 
 the courage to be different from others." 
 
 " He was very well off over there," said Lincoln. 
 
 " Certainly, or his bravery would not have been 
 costly. And now he has come back ? " 
 
 " Yes, for a long stay this voyage, he says. He has 
 brought his colony with him this time, and he means to 
 remain and see it started. It is really a fine thing to do. 
 You see, he is the eldest son now. He will have the 
 title." 
 
 She mused a moment. 
 
 11 Where is he now ? " she asked. 
 
 " That is what I expected you to tell me. He wrote 
 me that Quinnimont was the largest place near him." 
 
 " Then he is not far from here ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. He found the place, I think, after 
 he came to you in Judea. Do you remember his going 
 away for a day or two while he was with you ? He 
 wrote me about it at the time. It was then he decided 
 upon it. He calls it Gerrit, after an American who once 
 saved his life in Germany." 
 
 ' That is graceful." 
 
 " Yes, March has a way of doing graceful things, if 
 you have noticed. It would be culpable in any one 
 else ; but his manner implies that you invariably do the 
 graceful thing yourself, or at least that you only lack
 
 174 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 opportunity. When one thinks of it, I suppose, that is 
 a graceful attitude itself. But it is astonishing how 
 readily one forgives it." 
 
 Constance listened smilingly ; but " Gerrit ? " she 
 mused. "Gerrit ? Oh, I know ! It is the English col 
 ony near Afton. My uncle told us of it only the other 
 day. And we had a long talk about it. He thought it 
 a hopeful sign, and I remember he said that such a plan, 
 well carried out, would be a great thing for the country. 
 I suppose it would. And Mr. March is at the head of 
 it," she ended, absently. 
 
 " You know of the place, then ? You can direct me." 
 
 " My uncle can," said Constance, remotely, her 
 thoughts still surveying distant regions. " It is on the 
 National Pike." Then, returning to herself, " You will 
 not go on to-night ? " she said, cordially. " You must 
 let us keep you until to-morrow." 
 
 Lincoln assented readily to this agreeable proposal, 
 and she presently led him out upon the lawn, where her 
 aunt was seated with Jacinth. 
 
 " You know, Miss Constance," he said, as they went 
 down the steps, " I was to have seen you at Judea. It 
 was all planned. I was to run down and spend a few 
 days with March. Will you let me say," asked the young 
 man, with gentle earnestness, " that it will always be one 
 of my regrets that my slothful movements deprived me 
 of seeing your father again ? You won't think it strange 
 that I haven't spoken of your sorrow before ? " 
 
 Constance's eyes filled. 
 
 " Ah, I see that I ought to have let you take my sym 
 pathy for granted. Men always bungle these things. 
 But your father was very dear to me." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; and he was fond of you. Don't miscon-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 175 
 
 strue my weakness. I am glad to have any one speak 
 of him who cared for him. It somehow helps me." 
 
 Her tears were gone as they came up to the group on 
 the lawn, but she introduced him in a subdued voice and 
 turned away immediately. Lincoln needed no support 
 ing impulse to a conversation for which he straightway 
 made himself responsible ; and he was even presently 
 upon almost jocular terms with the reserved Jacinth. 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MARCH rode over next morning. Lincoln had written 
 him that he should stop as he went through Quinnimont 
 to see Constance, and this intimation that Miss Van 
 Cleef had changed her residence for one so near Gerrit 
 caused him a pleasurable shock of surprise. He felt 
 that he should like greatly to see her again ; he remem 
 bered that he owed her an apology for his unavoidably 
 abrupt departure from Judea. 
 
 As to Miss Van Cleef his mind was far from blank. 
 He had a group of distinct impressions regarding her, 
 and most of them were in the highest degree pleasant. 
 He was greatly interested to know how she had come 
 out of her trial. Her love for her father had been deep. 
 It must have been a cruel sorrow. But he had great 
 faith in her strength. She would have issued from the 
 ordeal purified, he was sure ; if it had not quite blighted 
 her, his knowledge of her informed him that she would 
 have been enlarged and uplifted by experience. The 
 expression of her personality had been systematically 
 repressed under the strict conditions of her life in Judea. 
 In her emancipation he wondered what new light had 
 come to her, or rather how the removal of the close 
 shade, through which her abundant light had hitherto 
 shone fitfully, had affected her. He said to himself that 
 he was fortunate to have the opportunity of satisfying 
 his curiosity to see her again, and, after giving Lincoln
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 177 
 
 time to reach Quinnimont, he rode over to that compact, 
 clean little town. 
 
 Lincoln, catching sight of him as he came cantering 
 up the shaded avenue, left the breakfast-table and ran 
 out with his napkin in his hand to meet him. They made 
 their mutual greetings as they walked to the stable 
 together, leading March's horse. When they returned 
 to the house breakfast was over, and a graceful family 
 group was seated on the long portico. 
 
 Constance sat on the top step comfortably curled 
 against one of the fat pillars. She rose with a glad smile 
 as she observed March, and stood waiting on the steps. 
 Their hands met in a clasp of hearty friendliness, and 
 March remained a moment smiling up at her as she 
 stood above him. 
 
 " You are looking well," was all he found to say. 
 Then he passed quickly by her and took the hands 
 whose owners Lincoln named to him. 
 
 A tingling current ran through him from her touch 
 which these handclasps did not stale. He seated him 
 self in the chair which one of the younger girls brought 
 him, with an infinitely agreeable sense of calm excite 
 ment, which he made no attempt to account for. 
 
 The heavily turfed lawn, from which the morning dew 
 had scarcely passed, wore a generous green. Its striking 
 breadth was flanked by double rows of maples and 
 poplars, and wandered down, after its first noble sweep, 
 among the slim, sun-lit boles of a scattered pine grove. 
 The roadway, shaded by the maples, which above inter 
 laced among the opposite silver poplars, swung in a 
 liberal curve on either side the wide space of green. The 
 lake showed a narrow, watery belt below the pines. It 
 reminded March faintly of Devonshire.
 
 178 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Constance seated herself against the pillar again, and 
 with her hands folded about her waist, listened quietly 
 to the phrases in which March was expressing his admi 
 ration of the neighboring country to Mr. Echols. 
 
 For the first time March saw her with her head entirely 
 uncovered. The prim little cap, in which he had been 
 used to see her, had lent her, he perceived, a foreign 
 quality. It had never been perfectly related to her, he 
 had felt ; but he had not imagined how much it con 
 cealed not physically, perhaps ; though the rich masses 
 of her hair were an agreeable surprise to him. He had 
 merely not thoroughly reckoned with the intense, ample 
 individuality which her cap, and kerchief, and austere 
 gray gown had quelled. 
 
 He could not fancy one feeling free to utter one's self 
 in such a costume in the midst of a carnival. It must 
 react upon the wearer, as the priestly robes do, without 
 reference to surroundings ; and surely her surroundings 
 had not been an encouragement to any form of supple 
 ness. As he observed her, sitting where a single shaft 
 of the keen morning sun fell upon the light brown of her 
 hair, it seemed to him that her close-fitting black gown, 
 with its hints of worldly taste, the dainty little collar 
 which had replaced the neckerchief, and the uncovered 
 head about which the breeze hovered and played, were 
 the symbols of her emancipation, as her former garb had 
 been the symbol of her bondage. The sun-ray which 
 sought her out from the east end of the portico, was the 
 informing light which had come to her. Perhaps one 
 might even imagine the breeze which sported about her 
 head the liberal atmosphere in which she was hence 
 forth to walk. 
 
 Certainly she looked, despite the vague air of sadness
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 179 
 
 which now always accompanied her, a creature pre 
 eminently at one with the stirring, eager, zestful world. 
 She was so natural a figure in it, now that he saw her 
 there, that March said to himself she had never been 
 more than exiled from it. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Echols, in answer to a question from 
 March, " fairly old. We are not very good at the ancient 
 on this side ; we've not been at it long enough. But we 
 can show excellent century, century and a-half mansions 
 that matter," he pursued, in his laconic, facile way, 
 with a faint wave of his hand. 
 
 Mr. Echols had a kind of grace uncommon with men. 
 His movements were harmonious ; his gestures had a 
 smooth, undulating ease. When he talked he leaned his 
 head slightly forward, without bending his body, in a way 
 that was indefinitely suggestive of a compliment to the 
 person with whom he spoke. His lips wore the invete 
 rate phantom of a smile. 
 
 " Of course it's not a fair race for antiquity with you 
 English. I don't know that we care to enter for it. 
 Though, Mr. March, there are the Indians. There's 
 a point or two there Behring Strait and that. If 
 you don't bar them, there is certainly something to be 
 said. Japan now that theory, you know. If we are 
 trying for age we must rely upon the Indian. I've 
 often thought that. That's why it's a pity to treat him 
 as we do. He ought to be kept in a guarded treasury 
 with the other archives, instead of being exterminated. 
 That is like the college of heralds sending out commis 
 sioners to cut down the genealogical trees. I'm in favor 
 of leaving them standing. It's true Indian genealogy 
 isn't first-rate, but it's all we've got." 
 
 Mr. Echols asked March about his plans, and they all
 
 i8o A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 listened with interest as he told how he had brought over 
 and established his colony. He admitted that it had not 
 been easy. He was not absolute head of the company, 
 and there had been some differences. His design of 
 combining a large number of farm laborers and small 
 farmers with the gentlemen colonists for whom he had 
 made his first explorations had not been found to be a 
 perfectly simple affair. But, as this had been his chief 
 point in the entire matter, he had urged it. In the end 
 he had gained his wish, and all were enviably content 
 now. 
 
 " Feudal a kind of small feudal system you are 
 establishing over there," said Mr. Echols. " I trust you 
 won't find it necessary to call your vassals out to render 
 military service." 
 
 " I think you are the nearest baron," returned March. 
 " I hope you won't make me fight." 
 
 " No, I think I prefer to claim as tenant in free and 
 common socage, and when I use my right of piscary I 
 shall send you up some fish out of your own brook as 
 rent." 
 
 " It is a kind of conspiracy your uncle is getting up," 
 said March, speaking to Constance for the first time. 
 
 The daintiest flush fled through her cheeks. She had 
 been observing him directly as he turned toward her, and 
 summoning before her memory the picture of a certain 
 memorable scene with the unsolicited retinue of thoughts 
 which always accompanied it. She looked down with a 
 consciousness almost perfectly new to March's experience 
 of her before responding. 
 
 "You v/ill find it wonderfully harmless," she said, at 
 length, with her head lifted to its usual firm poise. She 
 let fall upon him her serene and gently confident glance.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 181 
 
 Mrs. Echols suggested that Jacinth and Constance 
 introduce Mr. March to the beauties of the lake. Mr. 
 Echols ordered his horse and chaise to drive his son and 
 himself to town, and Lincoln joined the party which, in 
 obedience to Mrs. Echols's proposal, presently sauntered 
 over the lawn toward the boat house. 
 
 Lincoln, who had the kind of faculty with young ladies 
 which, like purer forms of genius, is probably born with 
 its possessor, by a delightful bit of management secured 
 Miss Jacinth to himself, and left March to push off in 
 one of the other skiffs with Constance. This was by no 
 means a disagreeable arrangement, but it gave March an 
 odd thrill. He felt a strange reluctance now that the 
 moment had come to meet her so intimately. It had the 
 charms of a voyage of discovery, this little row, but it 
 had also its uncertainties. He knew no one to whom he 
 occupied so peculiar a relation. Fortunately few such 
 incidents as that which distinguished his acquaintance 
 with Constance had come in his way. He remembered 
 that they had in fact scarcely met since their most singu 
 lar excursion to the cemetery. The brief colloquy at the 
 supper table on the same evening had been rendered 
 impersonal by a sad necessity. Now, however, they would 
 encounter without interposing media of any sort. 
 
 Probably no impassivity that may be assumed at future 
 meetings ever sufficiently defends a man who has fruit 
 lessly offered marriage to a woman ; and with March 
 the consciousness of a proposition which had committed 
 him to a definite view of their relation was very present 
 at the moment. This view had been perfectly frank and 
 sincere, but it will be confessed that his position in con 
 sequence of it was not without its embarrassing features. 
 His proposal to her had been in the way of a gentleman's
 
 1 82 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 obligation. It had seemed to him at the time obviously 
 proper, and it had certainly been the only thing suffi 
 ciently in the nature of reparation for the sad trouble his 
 presence in Judeahad unconsciously caused her. But it 
 must clearly affect their intercourse now that they had 
 met again. 
 
 It is to be added that his speculations touching the 
 change which he vaguely saw in her, and, more distinctly 
 guessed, had reached the point at which he was both 
 eager to satisfy himself and reluctant to know all that 
 there might be to learn. It was plain that she was 
 scarcely at all the young girl he had known. But the 
 difference was not certainly advantageous. There had 
 been great opportunities in the half year or so since he 
 had seen her. She had been through a crucial trial. 
 She had entered on a wholly new life. How had it left 
 her ? On the whole, as has been intimated, his attitude 
 was one of faith. But on various scores he entered the 
 boat with misgiving. 
 
 On her part, Constance was not without a sense of the 
 situation.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE lake sat in a dense, even circle of green. The 
 pines, oaks, maples, beeches and chestnuts left wide 
 aisles in their ranks for one who walked among them ; 
 but on the further side of the sheet of water they pre 
 sented a solid bank of green, scantily touched in the late 
 September by the modest pigments with which the un- 
 eager Autumn paints the southern woods. It is only in 
 the positive North and indubitable South that Nature 
 uses all her color box ; the half-way house is not her 
 favorite. The tree tops sloped to the fringe of shrubs 
 which on every side saw their obeisance mirrored in the 
 tranquil water. The house was not visible from the lake, 
 which, indeed, had an indescribable effect of remoteness 
 and solitude. 
 
 Lincoln had pushed out and rounded the bend beyond 
 the boat-house before the other boat was launched, and 
 his skiff was not in sight when March pulled out into the 
 lake. It was one of the perfect days which glorify the 
 Autumn everywhere. The air was soft and perhaps 
 faintly warm. One did not know. It certainly was not 
 cool. The vaguest and most respectful breeze imaginable 
 made its effect, like a true artist, without obtrusion. It 
 embroidered itself upon the water in a lacework as fine 
 as a cobweb. The sun had forgotten its vicious habit 
 of heat and shed now only a glow to make the heart glad. 
 In the way the painter evolves from his model, his 
 observations of a thousand women, and his imagination
 
 1 84 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 of what one woman should be, the perfect figure that we 
 know, the day seemed, to an admirable pattern, to have 
 added its memories of all the gentle days that ever were, 
 and illumined it all with its own graceful fancies of the 
 day that might be. A silence which nothing broke but 
 the mewing of a catbird and the mournful note of the 
 crows that from time to time flapped above the boat 
 toward their perch across the lake seemed to have taken 
 possession of the world ; and the loitering clouds looked 
 down on it all out of their stainless cup of blue. 
 
 March pulled vigorously down the lake for a few 
 moments ; then, bringing the skiff gradually about, 
 directed it toward a point upon the further shore at 
 which a line of alders leaned out over the water as if 
 seeking the embrace of sisters that never came. It was 
 pleasantly cool in their shade, and when he had reached 
 it he let the boat drift and sat with his knee in his hands 
 looking absently past Constance, who sat in the stern. 
 They had exchanged the necessary words at the boat- 
 house ; but a silence had fallen upon them since they set 
 out. 
 
 " We ought to have some experiences to exchange," 
 said March, at length, smiling musingly. 
 
 "I don't know where we should begin," returned the 
 girl. , 
 
 " Has so much happened ? " 
 
 " Everything ! Nothing seems ever to have happened 
 before. I believe you are the most recent occurrence." 
 
 " Indeed ! I supposed I had been happening a long 
 time." 
 
 " You have come back. I did not think you would 
 come back." 
 
 " You underrated my interest."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 185 
 
 " You seem to believe in us," she said. "As I told you 
 once, such faith seems very generous. But I never sup 
 posed you would give it such practical form." 
 
 " I hope you approve." 
 
 " I can't tell you how much I have thought of it. If 
 those people were as wretched as you used to tell me, it 
 must be a great thing for them. Even for the better 
 class it is such an opening, I should think. A woman 
 can't know much about these things, of course. But it 
 seems wise and good very good. It is the kind of 
 work I should like to do." 
 
 March's eyes kindled. 
 
 " You don't know how glad you would make me if you 
 could," he said. "A woman's hand the hand of a 
 strong, clear-sighted woman is exactly our present 
 need. You see, the men brought their families, and now, 
 until we can get the houses built, there is such perplexity 
 such a host of those little hourly vexations that draw upon 
 the force which ought to go into the project itself, as I 
 can't begin to tell you." 
 
 " And you think I could help you ? " 
 
 " You would be invaluable, Miss Van Cleef. There is 
 an infinite number of difficulties that only a woman can 
 smooth. You would see them at once. 'They would not 
 be hard, I think, to you. The poor women are not used 
 to your American ways, and, living as they are obliged 
 to, yet, half in bivouac, their trials seem to them very 
 considerable. Yes, you could do a great deal/ You see 
 that I am taking you very much at your word." 
 
 " You are very good. I am sure I did not wish to be 
 taken at anything less. You don't know what a prospect 
 you open to me ! " 
 
 " I hope I don't open too much hard work."
 
 1 86 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Whatever it costs I am sure I shall enjoy it. I have 
 my little charities in Quinnimont, but they leave me 
 abundance of time. And, if you will let me, I can't think 
 where I should find more pleasure than in employing it 
 in that way." 
 
 She leaned her elbows on her lap and clasped her 
 hands thoughtfully before her. Finally she looked up 
 with a little smile. 
 
 " Perhaps my enthusiasm seems strange to you. You 
 don't remember my concerning myself much about these 
 things?" 
 
 " You were always very good." 
 
 " Yes, I think I meant to be. But it was a poor 
 goodness, I am afraid, with superficial roots. It never 
 accomplished anything. It spent its time in intending 
 fairly well. Perhaps it is not much better yet, but I hope 
 I have bought some experience." 
 
 " I trust it has not been too expensive." 
 
 She smiled sadly. 
 
 " I suppose I paid the market price. It doesn't often 
 fall, I believe." 
 
 " No ; though the supply is always so much larger 
 than the demand, I'm afraid we shall never be. wise 
 enough to buy it cheaply. If there is ever an improve 
 ment I hope it will be in putting it on sale in the second 
 hand shops." . 
 
 " Yes, it seems sad that we can't get it at some one's 
 else expense. They are always offering it at bankrupt 
 sales," smiled she. " Ah, if I could have taken what my 
 father offered, what his whole life seemed to say ! " 
 
 " Perhaps it has come to you since. It has not ceased 
 to be good." 
 
 March pulled aimlessly at the oars.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 187 
 
 " Since ! Ah, since ! " 
 
 " As you say, a great deal has happened." 
 
 " So much ! " 
 
 March took up the oars and pulled for two or three 
 hundred yards. He stopped before a tiny cascade which 
 whitened the face of a moss-tufted slope of rock. The 
 falling water made a cooling sound with its shivering, 
 rustling slip over the stone ; it found its way into the lake 
 by a tortuous channel, and they fancied, as they looked 
 over the boat's side, that they could see where the lake 
 drank it in below the surface, and that its coming made 
 the water clearer. 
 
 " I have not liked to say how much I have felt for you 
 in your affliction," he said, briefly. 
 
 " You must know that I can't thank you for the 
 kindness that made things so much easier at the time. 
 I didn't know of it until afterward, and you did not give 
 me an opportunity to express my feeling." 
 
 " It was not entirely in my choice," he answered to 
 the mrld reproach in her tone. 
 
 " Yes, they have told me. I am so sorry," she said, 
 frankly. 
 
 " We had not known each other very well, I am afraid. 
 Perhaps we should have remained a little distant in spirit 
 if things had been different. But he was my brother. It 
 was very bitter." 
 
 u It must have put new difficulties in the way of your 
 American plan," said Constance. 
 
 " Yes, it did not make my father more willing to let 
 me leave home. He has never more than yielded to my 
 project." 
 
 " But you will go back ? " 
 
 " After a while yes."
 
 1 88 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Your unfortunates have their claims, but they have 
 not all the claims, I suppose." 
 
 " No, but I must see them settled. There are a great 
 many things to be done yet. I'm ploughing up the 
 ground, so to speak." 
 
 " I trust you will gather a large crop," she returned, 
 smiling. 
 
 March pulled slowly over to the boat-house and put up 
 the skiff. Constance, as she walked up the path, was reflect 
 ing upon the possibilities of effective charity which his 
 proposition discovered to her imagination. It would be 
 the fortunate sort of work from which one saw direct 
 returns. It was like doing a small tradesman's business 
 and casting up one's profits at the end of the day to a 
 cent. 
 
 Constance was not without the weakness of her sex for 
 material facts. A pound that one could see and handle 
 was better than a ton which one could only fancy. She 
 had a despairing feeling about some of her work that it 
 was like dropping stones into a pool. Doubtless it filled 
 it up, but she feared that she should not live to see the 
 water perceptibly displaced. She tried to have faith, and 
 the infirmity which led her to long for visible results was 
 far from the poor lust that they might be seen of men. 
 But she could not help desiring to see them herself. In 
 the work which March proposed to her at Gerrit she 
 hoped to be able to use her orderly broom, so to speak, 
 and to see the dust fly, and she tried to humble her con 
 fidence after a habit which had not been familiar to her 
 some months before that she was capable of this mis 
 sionary undertaking. 
 
 March was thinking of the evidences of the change in 
 her of which his fancy had given him hints. The lumin-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 189 
 
 ous and far-reaching nature of it was a kind of scandal 
 to his recent doubts of its character. The question 
 whether it was a gain was like an inquiry whether fol 
 iage was an addition to a tree. It seemed a perfectly 
 relevant adornment. It sprang as naturally from the 
 original substance of her character as leaves in Spring 
 drink the sap waiting their use and leap out upon the 
 sleeping branches. 
 
 The two were amply occupied with these thoughts as 
 they went up toward the house, and there appeared to be 
 a tacit understanding between them that their acquaint 
 ance was intimate enough to warrant the long silence 
 which neither was inspired to break until they reached 
 the piazza, steps. 
 
 " It is arranged, I believe, Mr. March," said Constance, 
 " that you and Mr. Lincoln are to spend the night, so 
 that you have time for anything. Do you want to help 
 me get some peaches ? " 
 
 March professed his eagerness, and when she had gone 
 in and found a basket she explained to him, as they walked 
 around the house and into the garden, that she meant 
 the fruit for an invalid, to whom she would take it "when 
 she drove to Quinnimont next morning. 
 
 " You know you are going out to Gerrit to-morrow," 
 said March. 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " How should I know it ? " 
 
 " I had hoped you would guess I should want you." 
 
 " You put too much faith in my imagination." 
 
 " I trust I don't rely too much on its friendliness to 
 the project now that it is before you. Should you like 
 to see the place ? " 
 
 He wished to hear her say it.
 
 1 90 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 11 Of all things," she answered, quietly, with genuine 
 wishfulness. " I will have the peaches sent into town." 
 
 When they came to the tree he took hold of a low- 
 growing branch and shook it quickly. A shower of the 
 rosy-faced fruit fell about them. 
 
 " I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to climb it, Mr. 
 March," she said. " I suppose I might give Mrs. Jewett 
 the bruised ones, for she doesn't see any kind often, but 
 they look so much more tempting when they are perfect, 
 and she is not well." 
 
 March swung himself readily into the tree. It was rather 
 high for a peach tree, and he mounted to a perch among 
 the upper branches before he found a point from which 
 he could reach the finest fruit. Then as he began to 
 pick, Constance suggested that he had forgotten the 
 basket. He looked about him. 
 
 " I'm rather too well placed to come down," he said. 
 " Suppose would you mind holding your dress ? I will 
 toss them into it." 
 
 Constance laughed. 
 
 " I suppose that is the least I can do, since you sacri 
 fice your dignity to climb a tree for me." 
 
 She caught up the corners of her skirt the least bit and 
 kneeling down, looked up at him with a delicious laugh. 
 She held the skirt far out in a tight clutch, and retracted 
 her form with a pretty timidity from the net which she 
 stretched before her. March sat looking down upon this 
 graceful picture for a moment before dropping the peach 
 in his hand into her skirt. She averted her head while 
 she waited fearfully for the fall of the fruit. The gentle 
 curves of her throat were turned up to him, and the 
 admirable lines of her figure were thrown into relief. She 
 had never looked so pretty to him.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 191 
 
 " Dear me ! " She glanced up. " I'm quite ready," 
 she said. 
 
 She drew back her head quickly as a large peach came 
 through the air. It gave a little shock to her hands as 
 it fell into the hollow of her skirt. She looked up again 
 as she took it out and put it into her basket. 
 
 " You look as if you were afraid they would hit you," 
 said March, laughing. " I shall be careful." 
 
 " Yes, but make haste," returned she, with a faint 
 blush. 
 
 He went on rapidly and she had presently filled her 
 basket. 
 
 March found an agreeable worldliness in her manner. 
 He did not know why, but he could not imagine this epi 
 sode happening in Judea. 
 
 As he left the whist table that evening to go to his 
 room with Lincoln, having endeared himself to Mr. Echols 
 by beating him the rubber, in company with Constance, 
 he repeated to himself that she was decidedly not the 
 young lady he had known. 
 13
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CARRIAGES were considered a kind of effeminacy about 
 Quinnimont, and the party which set out for Gerrit the 
 next morning, at March's invitation, was in the saddle, 
 save Mr. and Mrs. Echols, who drove in a chaise. Con 
 stance, Jacinth, Helen, and Ethel were mounted, and the 
 company went down the shaded carriageway at an easy 
 trot. The air had a fresh, new minted feeling, and 
 glowed and glistened in the morning sun. The dew shone 
 upon the cobwebs in the stubble of the fields they gal 
 loped by, and the hollows of the mountains were draped 
 with mist. The meadows freaked by black dots, which 
 were heaps of seed clover when one came to look 
 stretched fair in the young light on every hand. The 
 golden rod was rubbing its eyes and looking up as the 
 morning warmed itself ; the choke and elderberries were 
 shedding jewelled tears. It was a morning in which to 
 be glad of life, and, with a lithe horse under one, there 
 was no reason why one should not find his condition at 
 least an excellent imitation of content. 
 
 March asked Constance for a gallop, and giving their 
 horses rein, they left the party for one of those wild 
 flights which, it is to be supposed, are dear to men for the 
 momentary surrender to the latent animal in us all. Con 
 stance's cheeks were carnation and her eyes glistened as 
 they turned and let their horses take them back at a walk 
 to rejoin the company. Lincoln and Jacinth swept by
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 193 
 
 them, and Constance watched them disappear as if she 
 were thinking of their progress. Then she turned to 
 March with, 
 
 " I have been thinking of what you said yesterday, and 
 talking to aunt of it. It seems to her an excellent idea. 
 She is anxious to assist." 
 
 " She is very kind," said March. " I could not have 
 expected such sympathy." 
 
 " Indeed, I think everyone who understands your aim 
 must wish to help you. It is no credit to them. But 
 what I wanted to say was I don't know that I can say it 
 either." 
 
 " Don't try." 
 
 " Yes, I think I will. It's that if I do anything at 
 Gerrit I want to feel that I have a right to do it and a 
 reason a good, practical reason." 
 
 " Surely " March began. 
 
 " You don't understand. You would say that charity 
 doing what I can for fellow-creatures who chanced to 
 be less fortunately placed than I was reason enough. 
 I admit it ought to be, and, of course, that is what draws 
 me to it. But I feel the obligation upon me to prove my 
 right to exist, if you understand." She glanced at him 
 hesitatingly. " I have a great longing to relate myself 
 to the suffering people that one sees everywhere about. 
 They are a perpetual reproach, and their faces seem 
 always to be asking how I dare how anyone dare build 
 a wall about oneself and live only for the interesting 
 things. They are interesting ! Oh, they are! And that 
 is the trouble. They allure me even after I fancy I have 
 come out from behind my wall and gone down a little 
 among their wants. And so I would like to secure my 
 interest in this by a good, sordid tie. Mr. March, I think
 
 IQ4 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 you must go with me far enough to comprehend it's 
 true it isn't perfectly intelligible but you won't make fun 
 of me, and will you let me be a stockholder ? " 
 
 March did not laugh, but he said with smiling sym 
 pathy which was as grateful to her as assent for the 
 moment, 
 
 " In Gerrit ? Why, it isn't a stock company exactly, 
 Miss Van Cleef." 
 
 " I know. But somehow you can let me have a share 
 a money share in it. I didn't explain it all. It would 
 be a curb upon my pretensions like some one standing 
 by all the time and smiling pityingly on them. That is 
 what I need something to humble me. It is like but 
 I can't make myself clear. It must seem great non 
 sense." 
 
 " On the contrary, if you will let me say it, it's great 
 wisdom. But, Miss Van Cleef, Gerrit is only an experi 
 ment. If we had opened books and our stock were for 
 sale I shouldn't like you to risk anything upon our suc 
 cess." 
 
 " You believe it will succeed, don't you ?" she asked, 
 quickly. 
 
 "Certainly. But I should dislike to feel that any one 
 was hanging anything on that belief. No, Miss Van 
 Cleef ; wait until we begin to declare dividends and then 
 we shall want to present some of the stock, if there is 
 any, to our Lady Bountiful." 
 
 "You don't understand. I have some money that 
 doesn't belong to me." 
 
 " The more reason " 
 
 " No, it belongs to no one else. I hold it in trust. 
 There are some unpaid bequests of my father on which 
 the interest has been accumulating."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 195 
 
 " Indeed ! I had an impression Mr. Keator said that 
 your father's estate, with the exception of some small 
 legacies to his sisters, went to you." 
 
 " It did. But there are things that I knew he would 
 like to have done. I have promised Mr. Keator to build 
 him a new hospital at Judea, and you remember telling 
 me of the poor people in the West Indies ? I have 
 decided to make a permanent fund for the support of a 
 Moravian missionary there." 
 
 " You have done a capital thing. I can't tell you how 
 glad I am." After a pause : " But, perhaps, you have 
 taken my word too implicitly. There may be I sup 
 pose there must be places where the need is greater." 
 
 " Isn't it enough if we do what seems a good thing ? 
 We are not bound to hunt out the best thing." 
 
 They met the party, and, turning, they all cantered 
 on. From time to time as he rode beside Constance, 
 March glanced curiously at her. She seemed finely in 
 accord this morning with the world to which she had 
 said she longed to relate herself ; she appeared to have 
 her fingers on its pulse, and her breath came and went 
 in tune to all the life about them. She looked in every 
 direction as she rode with joyous inconsequence. Her 
 eyes honored each perfection of the perfect autumn 
 morning as their course opened before them, and her 
 head moved about with the nervous liveliness of a bird's, 
 while her lips wore a satisfied smile. Sometimes she 
 galloped forward a little, and March watched fondly her 
 even, graceful rise and fall in the saddle, with her body 
 bent slightly forward as if fearful that some of the morn 
 ing might escape her. 
 
 The company paused upon a hill to await the chaise 
 which their rapid riding had left behind. The emi-
 
 196 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 nence rose out of a blooming valley the valley in 
 which Quinnimont was. Along its slopes the earth lay 
 fallow, expectantly turning its face to the sun. In a 
 field near, where the long creases of the plough had been 
 levelled, the process of sowing went on. Down in the 
 bottoms the corn waved and rustled in banks of green 
 and yellow. The barnyards were rich with the sere evi 
 dences of harvest, and from among the clustering build 
 ings of a farmstead on the knoll beyond came the sound 
 of the smart, rhythmic tapping of flails. In the meadows 
 where the stubble lingered undisturbed by the plough, the 
 weeds and clover were making haste to green over the 
 bristling sticks, and an oily ether, such as a stove exhales, 
 danced and palpitated above them. The birds twittered 
 from the trees, and sang joyously as they swam through 
 the sun-lit air. The grasshoppers went with their 
 nimble, ceaseless leaps among the clover, sounding their 
 little harpstrings as they hopped from covert to covert. 
 
 " It is the autumn ! It is the autumn ! " they seemed 
 to say. " This is our last dance. They will turn the 
 lights out presently." 
 
 And the bastard daisies, the pink yarrow, the golden 
 rod, the yellow snapdragon, the occasional tardy clover 
 heads and belated dandelions that fringed the roadside, 
 seemed filled with the prophetic thought and drank 
 eagerly all the sunshine they could find ; while the 
 maples and sumachs, the Virginia creeper and the black 
 berry vines running along the stone walls were pranking 
 themselves in gay reds, determined that the season should 
 go out in a blaze of glory, though their ball dresses cost 
 them their existence. 
 
 Gerrit lay in the next valley, beyond the mountain 
 which faced Quinnimont, and when the chaise came
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 197 
 
 up, March and Constance pressed on to the clambering 
 road which made a way to their destination through the 
 hills. The road attacked the mountain by a brave steep 
 at first, then wound artfully about it, snatching an advan 
 tage where it could and lifting itself to the summit. 
 
 When they had climbed the long hills, they rode along 
 the levels at a swinging trot, and on the frequent inclines 
 dropped the rein upon their horses' necks and let them 
 take what gait they would. As they came from time to 
 time upon a clearing, they caught dissolving views of the 
 fertile valley below, at which Constance refused to look, 
 keeping the sensation untasted until it could be known 
 in its entirety. The fresh light of the sun, not yet five 
 hours old, fell softly on the tree-tops, and the lower 
 branches made wide nets to take it on their various 
 greens. It was prettiest where the saplings and succulent 
 young growths grew so dense that the brightness diffi 
 cultly sifted through the boughs by the maples and 
 chestnuts only knew what indirections. The wood 
 peckers were beating their reveille, and this, with the 
 hum of the bees, the chattering of orioles and the steady 
 hoof-falls were often the only sounds that broke the still 
 ness as they stooped under a wild grapevine, or con 
 tented their eyes with the graces which the sunshine 
 wrought in the woods. 
 
 March told Constance as they rode of the constitution 
 of Gerrit and his hopes for its success. He said that it 
 was not a commune except in the best sense, that is, 
 that every man had a common interest although prop 
 erty was separate. 
 
 " Our aim is modest enough. We do not hope to 
 revolutionize the world ; we do not think this the only 
 way, but only one convenient way, or an experiment
 
 198 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 toward it, and so we don't compassionate the remainder 
 of mankind, nor attempt to proselyte them. There are 
 a thousand needs, and we are groping toward an answer 
 to only one of them. Bringing these people across the 
 water and placing them here I am thinking of the farm 
 ers and farm laborers, who are my chief interest is 
 merely cutting a path for them. They are together, 
 because it was thought that our end was more easily 
 attained by that method than by scattering them. They 
 are being given a little guiding hand in entering the 
 path, but further than, that nothing will be done to assist 
 them. It is simply offering them an opportunity. A 
 plot of ground is assigned to them ; they build their 
 houses themselves out of logs, and they pay for . their 
 land by yearly installments out the profits of their crops. 
 The association will buy it back if they should ever wish 
 to leave ; or, if they remain, they can buy out the entire 
 settlement if they can find the money." 
 
 " Some one tells me that the people in Quinnimont 
 have all kinds of fancies about your object. None of 
 them are like that." 
 
 " No ; they imagine that we mean to do away with 
 money and bring back barter, and to force all farmers to 
 live in communities by bringing down the prices of things 
 through co-operation." 
 
 The view from the summit included both valleys. 
 That from which they had come was the more cultivated, 
 but the vale below, in which March pointed out the raw, 
 half-built houses of Gerrit, seemed quite as fertile. 
 Constance glanced over the prospect, which was free to 
 the horizon on all sides. The mountains made a perfect 
 circle, and looked down from every quarter upon the 
 smiling plains, which the gnomes that dwell in volcanoes
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 199 
 
 had forborne to upheave when the geology of this region 
 was enacting and the hills were lifted to the society of 
 the clouds. 
 
 Constance imagined the farm-dotted landscape a chess 
 board. The square, ploughed fields were the black spots 
 and the green meadows did for the others. She made 
 the stone houses castles, and the ordinary houses went 
 for pawns, the oaks and other portly trees for bishops. 
 When she saw a horse she knighted it. The rare 
 orchards planted in regular rows she liked to fancy 
 acrostics, and to read them up and down and across. 
 
 There were several new houses completed at Gerrit, 
 besides the fine old mansion of the revolutionary period, 
 which had been the residence of former owners. The 
 sound of hammering filled the air, and a host of men 
 were hurrying about in their shirt sleeves. Some of the 
 women were washing in front of their embryonic homes, 
 and the cheerful odors of many preparing dinners made 
 their way to the nostrils through the apertures which were 
 one day to be covered 4 with roofs, as well as through the 
 windows. 
 
 While he was yet in the saddle March was surrounded 
 by a numerous group of the colonists. One of them 
 announced that certain of the cows had broken pasture ; 
 another said that the corn which they had bought upon 
 their arrival ready planted upon one of their fields, had 
 been touched by frost. A third wanted instructions 
 about shingles, and another offered the information that 
 Jem Carver had not been seen since the night before. 
 
 " Drunk, I suppose ? " said March. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I doubt he is." 
 
 " Send him to me when he comes back." 
 
 With the other embarrassments he dealt promptly,
 
 200 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 giving rapid orders as he alighted and helped his guests 
 to do the same. 
 
 Constance asked that she might be allowed to make 
 acquaintance with the women for herself. 
 
 " I don't want them to feel that I am a visitor," she 
 said. 
 
 March assented with a smile of intelligence, and she 
 gathered up her riding-skirt and walked swiftly over to 
 the first woman she saw. She was washing, and took 
 one of her hands out of the tub to smooth an obstinate 
 strand of hair, while she courtesied with respectful 
 wonder. Constance had taken off her glove and bravely 
 shook her hand. She had gained experience during the 
 last half year, and, by one of the womanly intuitions, had 
 found the common ground upon which alone the ignorant 
 and distressed are successfully met. She neither con 
 descended to them nor pitied them. So far as she sym 
 pathized with them she made it seem the natural 
 sympathy of one woman for another, and she sur 
 rounded it all with a dignity \yhich asked no more 
 than it gave, and which commonly won their instant and 
 faithful respect. Her charity, however mistaken or in 
 effective it may have been, at least did not wear its em 
 broidered purse at its waist, nor carry its ointment as a 
 badge and its lint as a flag. It was perfectly unobtrusive, 
 and its methods were certainly eminently vindicated in 
 the case of this woman, from whom she had in ten 
 minutes the story of all her troubles and wants. 
 
 The party went about the inchoate settlement under 
 the guidance of March, and Mr. Echols kept his glasses 
 to his eyes and made his observations. 
 
 " I suppose I ought to keep up my character as a 
 Southerner, Mr. March, by telling you that shingles are
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 201 
 
 a great error. I would if I could with any sort of con 
 science. It's the lingering Connecticut in me. Thatch, 
 you know thatch is the proper thing. Durable ? No, 
 it isn't, and you would have to wait until next summer 
 to cut your straw. But then . Open roofs are incon 
 venient ? Certainly. But custom custom, you see, has 
 nothing to do with cold weather." 
 
 March said that he intended to clear the forest from 
 the mountain slopes and cultivate them. Mr. Echols 
 asked if he had determined what he would plant upon 
 them, and he owned that he had not. 
 
 " You haven't thought of grapes grapes and peaches ? 
 Now, there's southern France France and Italy. You 
 know where they plant their vineyards ? Southern 
 exposure, good slope, plenty of sun, that sort of thing. 
 When I tell our people that about here they hint that I'm 
 not a farmer. In other words, I don't know beans. But 
 grapes I fancy I know grapes ; and I'm glad to find an 
 unprejudiced subject. Try the experiment, Mr. March." 
 
 He said many more things in his shrewd, smiling way 
 as they walked about. 
 
 Mrs. Echols joined Constance when they encountered 
 her, and went about with her for a time, but presently 
 returned to the party which March was leading back to 
 his own residence. 
 
 This ancient dwelling was decorated with a piazza, like 
 enough Mr. Echols's to have been the product of the same 
 mould, and when he had seen his visitors seated upon it, 
 March left them in the competent care of Lincoln and 
 went to find Constance. He met her coming out of one 
 of the cottages. 
 
 " I hope you have been making excuses for us," he 
 said.
 
 202 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " There is not so much need as I fancied," returned 
 she, "but there are ever so many things to be done. 
 You can't think." 
 
 " I've heard," he said, smiling. 
 
 They walked slowly toward the house. 
 
 " Not the unabridged version," she answered, con 
 fidently. " They wouldn't tell it all to a man, even if 
 they could remember it. I can't recall everything myself 
 even now. There is so much no man could have an 
 idea. I think I shall have to come again and make a list 
 of the things they have. That would be quite simple." 
 
 " Come again, anyway," he said. 
 
 " Never fear ! I shall come often enough. I am greatly 
 interested." 
 
 " You can not come too often," said March, earnestly. 
 
 " If I can do any good. No." 
 
 " I shall like to have you come, you know, whether you 
 do our people here good or not," he said, with a novel 
 feeling thrilling him strangely. " Your coming will always 
 do me good." 
 
 His voice took an altogether new tone. He found 
 himself unable to control it. Their talk had always been 
 singularly free from the personal cast, and these words 
 were rich in implication. A fleeting expression halted 
 abruptly on her face, and she glanced quickly toward 
 him. Then she said : 
 
 " I suppose you know, Mr. March, that those poor 
 women have no washboards."
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MARCH stood upon the portico and thoughtfully 
 watched them ride away. Then he came to where Lin 
 coln was sitting and flung himself into a chair beside 
 him. He began to beat the sides of it nervously with 
 his hands. 
 
 " What is it, March ? " asked Lincoln. 
 
 " It's a long story." 
 
 " That is what you said yesterday when I asked about 
 Miss Van Cleef's transgression. You remember you 
 were speaking of something of the sort." 
 
 " Well, they are the same thing." 
 
 Lincoln pulled musingly at his upper lip with his 
 fingers, and looked at his companion. 
 
 " You give me credit for a great deal of penetration," 
 he said. 
 
 " How's that ? " 
 
 " I suppose you think I understand. I don't." 
 
 March smiled. 
 
 " I had no idea you understood. I don't myself." 
 
 " Well, then, I don't even understand what you are 
 trying to understand." 
 
 "You know that you will. You believe that I can 
 have no reason for refusing to tell you anything worth 
 while." 
 
 His face was full of the friendship to which they did 
 not give clearer expression.
 
 204 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " My dear fellow ! " exclaimed Lincoln, impulsively, as 
 he grasped his hand. 
 
 March told him the story of his relation with Con 
 stance. An irresistible need was upon him to set it in a 
 clear light before himself. He wished to understand, 
 if he could, the monstrous blindness which had withheld 
 from him until now the perception that he loved her. 
 
 " You see," he said, as he finished, " what a cheap 
 position it leaves upon my hands." 
 
 " You couldn't have known." 
 
 " No ; but I needn't have been an ass." 
 
 " I don't see how that is." 
 
 "It was gratuitous to tell her, that evening in the 
 cemetery, that I didn't care for her." 
 
 " Well, you didn't. You wouldn't have had yourself 
 kneeling and calling the gods to witness, would you ? " 
 
 " I might have said less. I need not have insisted on 
 my indifference." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you are trying to convince me that 
 you made it seem like conferring a favor. You must 
 remember I didn't meet you yesterday." 
 
 " Don't, don't, Lincoln ! Your friendly imagination 
 makes it worse. That is just what I did." 
 
 " Oh, come now ! " 
 
 " And as if that wasn't bad enough, I've no doubt I 
 showed her that I felt it was the gentlemanly thing." 
 
 " Well, it was, and that is where you have got to take 
 your stand." 
 
 " It was unnecessary to let her see what prompted me, 
 however you dress up the motive itself. I suppose you 
 admit that." 
 
 " See here, March, I don't admit anything. I wasn't 
 there and I don't know what you said, but I am as clear
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 205 
 
 as though I had taken it down in shorthand that you said 
 nothing ungentlemanly, or that you ought to be repent 
 ing of." 
 
 " Said ! It was my manner ! She must have thought 
 me a brute." 
 
 " I've no doubt she did," returned Lincoln, with 
 unction, " and that is the reason she has treated you with 
 such uncommon consideration ever since. She likes 
 the race." 
 
 " Do you think so, Lincoln ? Tell me ; has it seemed 
 so to you ? " 
 
 " How do I know ? I don't think she dislikes you." 
 
 March rose and walked up and down the portico with 
 nervous strides. He paused suddenly before Lincoln. 
 
 " It's a coxcomb's fancy, but I really believe I am not 
 indifferent to her. She lets me do things ; she seems 
 willing I should be with her." 
 
 " Well, what more do you want ? You don't expect 
 a girl like that to wear her heart on her sleeve." 
 
 " No, no, that's true. I should never know any more 
 than negatively from her manner if I went on until 
 doomsday. She isn't a girl who keeps her mental doors 
 open. That is what I admired in her from the first." 
 
 "Yes," said Lincoln, kindly. 
 
 He had always felt that it was one of the offices of 
 friendship to listen patiently to the lover's rhapsodies of 
 one's friends. 
 
 " And if, as you seem to think, she has forgiven that 
 cruel affront to all her maiden pride, it is only the merci 
 fulness that I have always felt in her." 
 
 " I didn't say she forgave it. That isn't the word. 
 She didn't believe you." 
 
 " Lincoln ! "
 
 206 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 
 
 " Yes, I mean it. A girl with her intuitions, with her 
 imagination, could not have avoided seeing what you 
 were able to blind yourself to. It's an extremely dull 
 woman who doesn't know when a man is in love with her, 
 and I hope you don't think her one of the exceptions." 
 
 " Lincoln, I must tell you that you go a great ways. I 
 didn't say " 
 
 " I know you didn't, but you won't tell me that it 
 wasn't so." 
 
 <l Oh, I don't know, Lincoln. I have been deceiving 
 myself, of course, in the ingenious lover's fashion. I was 
 just as much in love with her when I left her in Judea 
 as I am now, only I called it by another name. I pre 
 tended to myself that I was interested in her curious situ 
 ation, in her character, in her difficulties with the Church, 
 all that. Dolt that I was ! It literally needed another 
 sight of her to put that poor nonsense to flight. But I 
 can't tell when it began. You can't date passion, Lincoln. 
 I don't see how I can say whether I was in love with 
 her or not when I posed for indifference that evening in 
 the cemetery and made her listen to my condescending 
 propositions. How can a man tell when such a feeling 
 rises in him ? " 
 
 " He can't ; but, as I say, a woman can." 
 
 "You don't know her. Such unconsciousness, such 
 modesty " 
 
 " Oh, dear, don't fancy I don't know all that. Of 
 course, I only became acquainted with her infinite deli 
 cacy yesterday, while you have had the advantage of a 
 life's intimacy, but I thought I had an idea or two about 
 her." 
 
 " I've no doubt you have, but you use your imagina 
 tion."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEA T. 207 
 
 " My dear March, where is yours ? I didn't say that 
 she announced it to herself ; she didn't put it on her 
 bulletin board. But you are ready to believe that she 
 might display as much ingenuity as you in cheating her 
 self. Your fancy is probably not so dull that you are 
 unable to think of her as using her sense of your love as 
 an armor to her pride, quite unconsciously." 
 
 " And you suppose her not to have been aware of her 
 knowledge ? Doesn't that strike you as a little bit too 
 metaphysical ? " 
 
 " On the contrary, it is one of the simplest things 
 in life, and when you ask her, I think she will tell 
 you so." 
 
 " When I ask her ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? I suppose you are going to 
 offer yourself." 
 
 March took another turn upon the portico. He came 
 back with his hands thrust gloomily in his pockets. 
 
 " You must know that I can't." 
 
 " Oh, see here ! " cried Lincoln, rising. 
 
 " You don't want it explained to you, I trust ? " 
 
 " Pshaw ! March, you can't mean ! Oh ! look 
 
 here ! " deprecated the young man. 
 
 " You haven't been thinking that I would ? " 
 
 Lincoln stared at him. He put his hand on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Yes, I have. It never occurred to me. I thought, of 
 course " 
 
 His protest died upon his lips : he could not find the 
 abundant arguments which a moment before seemed to 
 crowd about him. 
 
 " You see, Lincoln, even you can't find a decent de 
 fence for it." 
 14
 
 208 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " I should like to know who is doing the metaphysical 
 now," he said, sitting down, doggedly. 
 
 He put one of his well-dressed legs upon the other 
 and regarded it with fixed disapproval. 
 
 " Look at it fairly, Lincoln. How can I tell her that 
 I was mistaken, that once she seemed scarcely worthy to 
 occupy the exalted position of Owen March's wife, but 
 that I have thought better of it, and now see in her some 
 virtues formerly overlooked which entirely qualify 
 her? How can I tell her that? But I needn't urge it." 
 
 " No, you needn't," admitted Lincoln, " though you 
 overstate it. I'm not blind, and I understand how you 
 feel. Your sentiments are perfectly proper ; you could 
 not feel less. But this is one of the cases they're very 
 rare in which you ought to sacrifice your proper senti 
 ments. There is something higher concerned. You've 
 no right to trifle with it, it seems to me." 
 
 " Don't put temptation in my way, Lincoln. My inclin 
 ation is strong enough." 
 
 " Of course it is, and you may as well yield to it. You 
 don't seem to think of her." 
 
 " Excuse me. I had supposed myself to be think 
 ing only of her." 
 
 " Do you want me to be frank ? " 
 
 " Surely." 
 
 " Then I should say that your personal pride was at 
 least as much involved as your consideration for her feel 
 ing." 
 
 " You may be right, Lincoln," owned March, gloomily. 
 " There doesn't seem much chance of my coming out of 
 the thing as a gentleman, in any event." 
 
 " Oh, dear me ; yes, there is. But there are certainly 
 several opportunities for mistakes. I think you will
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 209 
 
 make one if you don't take the measures of her feelings 
 on both sides." 
 
 " Leave me a shred or two of self-respect. Don't ask 
 me to presume that she is in love with me." 
 
 " You might try for her vague sense of it," smiled Lin 
 coln, who was always as ready to laugh at himself as at 
 others. Then after a pause : " The fact is, it is awkward. 
 Nothing is to be gained by blinking that. But you have 
 still the right to hear her decision from her own lips. 
 That is every man's due, and you certainly haven't for 
 feited it. You would be no worse off if she refused you 
 than you are now." 
 
 " It would confirm the awkwardness incurably. You 
 seem to forget that. To offer myself in the circum 
 stances is bad enough, but to offer and be refused would 
 be killing." 
 
 " Use your fancy hopefully. Suppose she accepts ? " 
 
 " I can't suppose it." 
 
 " Your modesty is absurd." 
 
 "Oh, don't adorn me with spurious virtues." 
 
 " I don't, but I can't understand your distrust." 
 
 March smiled sadly. 
 
 "You can understand there being another man." 
 
 " No, not in that village," said Lincoln ; but he leaned 
 forward a little, interestedly, as March sat down beside 
 him. " Don't cheapen her. She would not concern her 
 self about anything less than the best." 
 
 " He is the best. That is my trouble. He has all the 
 virtues." 
 
 " But does she love them ? " 
 
 March studied the back of his hand. 
 
 " I don't know. I can only say that for three years 
 they were constantly shown her. I don't see how she
 
 210 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 could fail to be attracted by them, backed by his evident 
 passion. They are charming virtues and he is an excel 
 lent man. In the circumstances, if she does not love 
 them and him, she ought to." 
 
 " Ah, then, you needn't distress yourself. She doesn't 
 being a woman. I have no doubt she has done the 
 unexpected thing and fallen in love with your vices." 
 
 " Very well, then ; I hope I shall be strong enough not 
 to give her the opportunity of telling me so." 
 
 "I don't," returned Lincoln, stoutly.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ON the second day following, Constance drove her 
 aunt over to Gerrit in the pony carriage. When they 
 had alighted in the single, noisy street of the settlement 
 she lifted the cushion from the seat and loaded the man 
 who came for the horse with bundles drawn from a 
 mysterious receptacle beneath. March hearing the 
 brisk rumble of her wheels came out. He brought up 
 some of the young gentlemen of the settlement and 
 introduced them to her. She remembered afterward 
 that she had met a tall Mr. Elden, a particularly ruddy 
 Mr. Borough, a Mr. Marvin with an illuminating smile, 
 and a very young Mr. Featherstonaugh who asked her how 
 Quinnimont society ranked. Among these polite fellows 
 there were two sons of earls and the sixth son of a duke, 
 who had accompanied the colonists in search rather of 
 adventure than of gold. 
 
 Several who had been made known to her on her 
 previous visit came up and spoke to her smilingly. But 
 the larger part of these young men had been engaged 
 in hunting two days before, and she saw them now for 
 the first time. Mr. Marvin wished to know if she was 
 fond of hunting, and was decorously appalled when she 
 said she knew nothing about it. He assured her that 
 she ought by all means to learn. They did a great 
 deal of it at Gerrit. The duke's son walked with her 
 aunt as they went among the cottages. Mrs. Echols
 
 212 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 asked March if he had seen the plan for the tenement 
 cottages in the last issue of the Architect's Journal. 
 
 " Mr. Echols takes it," she explained. " He fancies 
 himself interested in architecture, you know." 
 
 March said he had observed it and found it sugges 
 tive. The paper was taken for their reading-room, he 
 added. 
 
 " Have you a reading-room ? " asked Constance. " We 
 didn't see it." 
 
 4< We have several things that you have yet to see. 
 There are redeeming features about the place, though 
 we are short of washboards," exclaimed March. 
 
 This was said from Mrs. Echols's side. 
 
 He had obviously not sought Constance's company, 
 and indeed seemed willing to defend himself from being 
 left to talk with her alone. 
 
 March had been grappling with his feeling since his 
 talk with Lincoln, but it did not appear to go down 
 readily before his assault. He constantly said to him 
 self that it was most unpleasant either way. This dis 
 tressing balance of disagreeable events has not been 
 commonly found a simplification of difficulties. It 
 resulted with March in giving him a great deal to think 
 of. The ladies did not remain long after they had dis 
 tributed the comforting articles which they had brought 
 with them, but Constance carried away a faint sense of 
 his avoidance of her. This was confirmed upon her 
 next charitable visit to Gerrit, and as March did not 
 call, a vague wonder began to stir in her. 
 
 March was cruelly tortured, and he got no consolation 
 from Lincoln. He had been singularly free from the 
 trivial affairs of boyhood and his passion had an over 
 mastering force. It was perfectly plain that he must
 
 A VIC TO RIO US DEFEA T. 213 
 
 abandon the colony if he did not wish to see her. She 
 came with assiduous regularity, and he could only fancy 
 the pleasure he might find in these visits if he could feel 
 at liberty to meet her as another man might. 
 
 Lincoln's friendship was offered with a discrimination 
 for which he felt grateful. It was a rich opportunity for 
 the friendly offices, but it might easily have been made 
 too much of. Lincoln went just far enough, and his 
 unfaltering adherence to his original view of the situation 
 was a grateful tower of strength in the midst of March's 
 uncertainty. 
 
 Constance drove home one day with her aunt, espe 
 cially disturbed by his manner. She had fancied at^ first 
 that she deceived herself, and the impalpability of the 
 change certainly lent it a dubious air. But she was 
 certain now that she saw a change in his manner toward 
 her. The change implied no reproach. Of that much 
 she was certain. On the contrary, it was full of an 
 almost exaggerated, if distant respect. Its constant pre 
 sumption upon her understanding, its manly, restrained 
 pleading for a suspension of judgment, appealed with a 
 kind of subtle flattery to all her womanly senses, and 
 perhaps this was the reason that she could find no resent 
 ment for it in her heart. 
 
 The sensitive chords of pride which she felt ought to 
 be stirred seemed to have forgotten their office, and she 
 tried to believe that they had been disused so long by her 
 systematic humbling of herself that a minor temptation 
 could not set them vibrating. But she could not cajole 
 herself so far. She knew that slighter matters had 
 roused the old sentiment, despite the best that her newly- 
 won strength could do, and the certainty that if it were 
 some other than March she would find the appropriate
 
 214 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 feeling awake without her summons, broke down this 
 pleasing fancy. 
 
 " Aunt, have you noticed a change in Mr. March's 
 manner recently ? " she asked, suddenly, as they 
 drove. 
 
 Mrs. Echols was silent for a moment, apparently 
 piecing her recollections together. 
 
 " I don't know," she answered, slowly, at length. 
 " Have you ? " 
 
 " I can't tell. I ask you." 
 
 " Why, I remember " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " \ remember very little, dear, but I seem to feel some 
 thing now that you speak of it." 
 
 Constance touched her whip thoughtfully to the pony's 
 flank. 
 
 " Yes, that is what makes it hard. One can't say 
 what it is, or even certainly that it is at all, but it's 
 impossible not to feel it." 
 
 Mrs. Echols looked musingly at the pony's even, 
 nervous little motions. 
 
 " And does it disturb you ? " she asked, kindly. 
 
 Constance smiled. 
 
 " Don't you think it ought ? " 
 
 " That depends " Mrs. Echols hesitated an 
 
 instant. 
 
 Constance looked at her questioningly. 
 
 " Upon whether I like Mr. March, were you going to 
 say? Certainly I do greatly. He has been very 
 kind. He was fond of father, I think, and at the time 
 of my trouble he did everything. He rode to Philadel 
 phia did I tell you ? through a terrible storm for Dr. 
 Fleet, and then afterward made all the dreadful arrange-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 215 
 
 ments and went away without a word. Yes, I have 
 every reason to like Mr. March." 
 
 It was a cold, dreary day, with the prophetic tang of 
 Winter in the air. The leaves took the wind shiveringly 
 upon their grey backs, and the stacks of corn, cut, 
 and standing in soldierly ranks, seemed glad to hug their 
 comrades close for warmth. 
 
 Constance caught her pelisse about her as a colder 
 breeze sprang upon them from the depths of the wood, 
 and pulled the robe over her aunt as that lady said, 
 
 " I understand, and it was very good of him. But I 
 was not going to ask you about your feeling toward him. 
 I wanted you to ask yourself whether you had given him 
 cause for offence." 
 
 " Offence ! Oh, my dear aunt, there is none ! " 
 
 Constance reflected a moment ; then she gave utter 
 ance to a thought which was that moment born in her, 
 though she spoke it as if it were immemorially familiar. 
 
 " Don't you see that he is withholding himself from 
 some generous idea that it is the part of delicacy not to 
 approach me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Echols looked at her rather blankly, and tucked 
 the robe about her matronly form before she said, 
 
 " I'm bound to say that I don't, but I'm willing to 
 believe that you see, my dear girl, and are not wrong 
 only it would be right interesting from your point of view 
 to understand a little more clearly. Go over the history 
 of your acquaintance. What is there that could have 
 brought this about ? Perhaps you will think, if you run 
 through it carefully. Tell it to me, dear, if it will help 
 you." 
 
 Constance listened to this kindly logic in silence. 
 
 " Get up, Lady ! " she admonished her pony, and gave
 
 2l6 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 her an urgent little tap. " It would take a long time," 
 she said, at length. " Somehow a great many events are 
 associated with Mr. March. It would be hard to give 
 you a fair idea of some of them, and one ah ! it's too 
 awful ! " 
 
 " Don't, dear, don't ! Forgive me ! I didn't know I 
 was laying old sores bare. I couldn't let you tell me 
 now." 
 
 Constance kept her eyes resolutely fixed on the road in 
 advance. 
 
 " But if you thought it might help me ? " she said, 
 through her compressed lips. 
 
 Mrs. Echols leaned over and kissed her for answer, 
 and Constance did not wait for other invitation to tell 
 her story. 
 
 " And then what do you suppose he did ? " exclaimed 
 she, when she had told of Mr. Keator's warning, of her 
 obstinacy, which she did not attempt to palliate in any 
 way, and of the never-to-be-forgotten scene in the 
 church. 
 
 " I don't know, I'm sure," was Mrs. Echols's expectant 
 answer. 
 
 " You would scarcely imagine. It was not like what 
 every other man would do, and yet as he did it you could 
 not conceive that any gentleman would do anything less. 
 Fancy, dear aunt ! He proposed to me ! After being 
 scorned and upbraided in that public way, after having 
 fallen to what seemed to me the lowest depths, he asked 
 me to marry him. I never knew anything finer." 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " What could I say ? I couldn't accept him very well, 
 could I ? " 
 
 " That depends upon how you felt toward him."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 2l^ 
 
 " It seemed to me that it rather depended upon the 
 feeling which prompted him. At all events, I had no 
 feeling toward him to inquire into. You can fancy a 
 man's being a great deal to one and nothing to one, can't 
 you, aunt ? I'm sure you can. That is the feeling, or 
 lack of feeling, I had for Mr. March. He was an extremely 
 agreeable friend, and now he was an extremely kind one. 
 I had never thought of him in that way." 
 
 " So you refused him ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; and my belief was justified. He urged 
 his suit as eagerly as if he had really desired his success 
 for the moment perhaps he did wish it. It was very 
 generous. But he accepted the answer quietly. He 
 had simply felt that it was the gentlemanly thing to do 
 that was it. He had said that he could not pretend a 
 passion." 
 
 " Did he say that ? " 
 
 " Not those words. He said that he was not in love. 
 Why ? Ah, aunt, you didn't fancy that he was ? " 
 
 " I don't know. But why, don't you see, my 
 child ? " 
 
 " No," returned Constance, slowly fixing her wander 
 ing eyes on Mrs. Echols's face. 
 
 " But I won't say it or rather I will, but another time. 
 I shall have to think. You will be patient with me for a 
 little, dear ? " 
 
 " Patient ! " cried Constance, impulsively. " Lock 
 your fancy in a box and throw it into the Potomac, aunt! 
 I shall never ask you ! " 
 
 She put her free arm about her. 
 
 Jacinth was absorbedly poking the fire as they walked 
 in upon her and a servant, apparently by her direction, 
 was fetching a monstrous log.
 
 218 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " I thought I would have it warm for you," she said, as 
 she turned to nod to them with the tongs in her hand. 
 " Isn't it very cold out ? " 
 
 Helen, the elder of the two younger girls, came up to 
 Constance before she could draw off her pelisse. 
 
 "Oh,p/ease open this!" she begged, holding out a 
 long, worn official paper covered with erasures and direc 
 tions, and bearing a number of English stamps. " It 
 came this morning just after you went, and it has taken 
 heaps of patience not to open it. Ethel says it looks as 
 if there were a whole romance sealed up in it. Do you 
 see where they have crossed your father's name out and 
 written yours, and then it has gone to Quinnimont, Ver 
 mont, instead of Maryland ? The 'Md.' isn't very plain," 
 she went on, putting her finger on it as Constance took 
 the packet ; " but their eyesight must have been mighty 
 poor to have sent it away up to Vermont. It's the title 
 deeds to some great estate in England, Cousin Constance ; 
 that's what it is. I wonder I hadn't thought of that. And 
 you have been kept out of it by some wicked man who 
 has repented on his death-bed and left you even more 
 than your share. That is the way it goes in the story 
 books." 
 
 She talked very rapidly, the words jostling and leaping 
 over one another like stones tumbling down hill. Her 
 vivacious manner was not altogether southern, but she 
 had her mother's rich tone and pronunciation and a large 
 store of the hearty southern idioms. 
 
 " Perhaps," she began, " but please open it, Cousin 
 Constance ! " she begged. " It's mighty interesting." 
 
 Constance threw her pelisse and hat upon the chair 
 and sat down before the fire. Her cheeks were glowing 
 from the drive, and in her eyes the mild excitement of
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 219 
 
 curiosity shone as she broke the seal in her leisurely man 
 ner with her penknife. 
 
 She gave a low exclamation. 
 
 " What is it, dear ? " asked Mrs. Echols, gently ; but 
 she read on. 
 
 She folded up the papers at length. Her hands fell 
 into her lap, and for a moment she sat musing. Finally 
 she looked up and said, as if in answer to her aunt, 
 
 " You know father amused himself by writing letters to 
 a London newspaper ? " 
 
 " No, dear " 
 
 " Yes, after we went to Judea he needed some distract 
 ing occupation. He was glad to get back, but he missed 
 the city, too, and he enjoyed writing. I used to be so 
 glad of it, and this letter is to say that he was replaced 
 before his death. His political ideas were the ideas of 
 his generation. He often said that, and he would add, in 
 his generous way, that perhaps it was time he gave place 
 to new blood. But to think it had happened and he 
 never knew it ! " 
 
 " Why, how was that, Cousin Constance ? " asked 
 Ethel. 
 
 The young girl had drawn a cricket to her side, and, 
 resting her elbows upon Constance's lap, was looking 
 eagerly into her face. 
 
 " That is the strangest part of it. You see, aunt," she 
 said, bending forward to show her the paper, while Ethel 
 sat upright upon her cricket, " this would not have 
 
 reached father before " She brushed her eyes 
 
 quickly. " It was mailed too late even if it had come 
 directly. It was not the compassion of chance. It seems 
 to have been only the most perfect human forbearance. 
 It's not very clear to me yet. I ought to understand.
 
 220 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 After a while, I suppose, I shall. But ah, that must 
 have been Mr. March's real errand ! " she exclaimed to 
 herself, " and we did not know." 
 
 She sat meditating for a moment, and they all waited 
 with a kind of respect for her thought. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Mrs. Echols, after what 
 seemed a long time. 
 
 " Mr. March has done us all an even greater kindness 
 than I knew." 
 
 " Do you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes, aunt," returned she, with decision. " These 
 papers make that clear." She ran her eyes hastily over 
 one of them again. " I can't doubt it. The dates show 
 it. When Mr. March came to us in April he carried with 
 him a commission for the place which father held. We 
 can only imagine how he avoided assuming it, but at 
 least he made no motion toward it, and except for this 
 we should not have known." 
 
 " He must have resigned," suggested Helen, whose 
 ears had not been closed. " Wasn't it splendid of him !" 
 
 " And he never said a word ! " exclaimed Ethel, 
 ardently. 
 
 These young ladies were at the interesting period of 
 life in which a hero is a necessity. March seemed for the 
 moment to serve their purpose excellently. 
 
 Constance was silent. She was thinking gratefully of 
 his infinite generosity. 
 
 " I should like greatly to thank him," she said, after a 
 time.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SHE had an opportunity to thank him on the morrow, 
 for he came over to Quinnimont to assist in preparing 
 the hall, which served as the theatre of the place, for a 
 little play arranged to take place that evening. But she 
 did not see him when she reached the hall ; he was 
 engaged behind the scenes no doubt. And she found 
 herself glad. of the delay, for she began to wonder how 
 she should approach the subject uppermost in her 
 thoughts. 
 
 March and Lincoln had come in early from Gerrit 
 with several of the laboring colonists, and at the time of 
 Constance's arrival, March was engaged with one of the 
 colonists in moving some scenes under the direction of 
 Mrs. Echols. The performance was to be for the benefit 
 of the charitable society which had occupied much of 
 Constance's attention during her stay in Quinnimont, 
 and she naturally found much to do on this morning of 
 the event. She had not been moved to offer to take part 
 in the comedietta which a number of young people 
 slightly known to her had been engaged in rehearsing 
 for a week or two. She had doubted her talent for act 
 ing, and besides, had just begun to busy herself at Ger 
 rit when the project of the play was set on foot. But she 
 was much interested in the affair as likely to help on her 
 charitable work in Quinnimont ; and went about now, 
 helping actively where she could.
 
 222 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Lincoln was on the stage assisting in the decoration 
 of a booth necessary in the play. As several of the 
 charming young ladies of Quinnimont were also engaged 
 upon this work, the task was not disagreeable to him. 
 Constance observed him amusedly, balanced on a high 
 step-ladder and chatting merrily with the group of 
 feminine assistants below. They handed him tacks and 
 hammer and flowers and paper as he needed them, and 
 seemed to find him a delightful assistant. Jacinth sat a 
 little apart sewing quietly upon the long breadths of a 
 cambric curtain to be used elsewhere in the room, and 
 when Lincoln had accomplished his labors upon the step- 
 ladder he came down and sat beside her, talking while 
 she worked. From time to time he was summoned by 
 the nervous little band of workers at the booth, whose 
 chief difficulty seemed to be the irremediable vagrancy 
 of a pair of highly necessary scissors ; but he always 
 returned to Jacinth when he had supplied their demands. 
 
 Constance was busy in the hall itself, where presently 
 she found herself in need of a large silver vase which 
 Mrs. Bartlett had promised to bring to be filled with 
 flowers. It was to crown a bit of decoration which Con 
 stance had planned to clothe a corner of the bare hall. 
 Mrs. Bartlett had placed her vase in the fly gallery 
 above the stage, where a number of articles had been left 
 for safe keeping. Constance went for it herself, as Mrs. 
 Bartlett could not leave her work. She climbed the 
 steep stairs leading up among the flies, and then remem 
 bered that Mrs. Bartlett had not said on which side of 
 the stage she had left the vase. It occurred to her 
 that the hiding-place had been selected a little too 
 ingeniously. 
 
 Wherever Mrs. Bartlett had placed it, apparently it
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 223 
 
 was not where she was, and she walked upon the bridge 
 that spanned the stage. It looked fairly secure while the 
 gallery floor was under her, but when she found herself 
 out upon the slender way with nothing beneath but the 
 dusty, painted borders and the lines of candles before 
 them, she felt frightened at her daring. She looked 
 across to the opposite gallery for which she had set out. 
 It seemed an awful distance. She glanced down at the 
 stage and drew her head back quickly with a little shiver. 
 It was twenty feet beneath her. She tried to rebuke her 
 fears, to reason with herself. The void below might as 
 well have been fathomless. She tried to turn and retrace 
 her steps. She felt a wild fear taking possession of her. 
 Ordinarily she was far from timid, but as she tried to turn 
 on the narrow space with no rail for support, she could 
 not avoid looking below and an unwilling cry escaped 
 her. She remembered afterward how clearly she had 
 seen every thing the men hammering on the stage, her 
 aunt filling a vase with golden rod, Mrs. Bartlett regard 
 ing the decorations, on which she was working, with arms 
 akimbo, Helen and Ethel arranging a rug on the stage 
 yellow and grey and blue the very drooping fringe of 
 tallow about the candles in the flies. Then some one 
 seemed to look up from the stage and perceive her, and 
 March came bounding up the stairs. 
 
 " Wait a minute, Miss Van Cleef," he said, and started 
 upon the bridge. 
 
 " No, no," she begged, in a voice which she tried hard 
 to control ; " it's not safe ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I think it is," said March, with a reassuring 
 smile ; but his face was pale. 
 
 He took another step. 
 
 " Oh, don't, don't ! Please don't ! "
 
 224 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 11 Very well," returned he, as he retired to the gallery. 
 " Try it alone," he said, kindly, as he stood waiting for 
 her. 
 
 " I can't. I think " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I think I could do it now if you won't watch me." 
 
 March promptly turned his back. He waited for a full 
 minute. There was no sound. She was still hesi 
 tating as he looked about, and without speaking he 
 went quickly out on the bridge, and taking her hand, 
 while he moved backward himself, drew her gently but 
 firmly in. She sank upon a theatrical battered gilt throne 
 which had been stowed in a corner of the gallery, and 
 throwing an arm over the back, let her face fall upon it. 
 Her closed eyes were turned from March, but after a 
 moment or two she looked up with a weary smile. He 
 was regarding her anxiously. 
 
 " How silly ! " she breathed. 
 
 " Do you think so ? It seemed to me very natural. 
 You ought not to have attempted it." 
 
 "Of course. I know. But Mrs. Bartlett put her vase 
 here and I came to look for it." 
 
 " Her vase ? Isn't this an odd place for it ? " 
 
 " No ; she was afraid of the boys who are running 
 about the hall ; and then, I suppose, she thought it 
 might be stolen. But perhaps she has hidden it a little 
 too carefully. I don't see it. Do you ? " 
 
 " I suppose it's on the other side. Did she specify ? " 
 
 " I didn't ask. I didn't know there were two sides 
 when I started." 
 
 " But there is a stair leading up to the opposite gal 
 lery. It's not easy to understand why you didn't come 
 down and take that."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 225 
 
 " Oh, yes, it is if you are acquainted with me. It was 
 my pride. I thought I could do it." 
 
 "You know they raise and lower the curtain from the 
 other gallery, and that is where most things employed 
 up here are kept," said March, not accepting the oppor 
 tunity to discuss her foibles. " This side is used very 
 little." 
 
 " I didn't know," said Constance. 
 
 " Was your vase a large silver one decorated in gold ? 
 I think I saw something like that when I went into the 
 opposite gallery for Mrs. Echols. She is also using it 
 for a store-room." 
 
 Constance said that he had probably seen the object 
 of her search, and he went quickly across the bridge and 
 presently returned with it. 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " she exclaimed, " and let me thank 
 you now too for rescuing me. I've scarcely recovered 
 from my fright yet and I had forgotten. How did you 
 know ? " 
 
 " You gave a little cry, you remember, and I was just 
 below at work on the scenery." 
 
 " Were you ? I didn't see you. Sit down, Mr. March, 
 if you can find a seat. I'm not half ready to move yet." 
 
 She looked at him smilingly. Her amiability was hard 
 to bear. He turned away with a disturbed face to find 
 a chair. He discovered one of those plain wooden 
 chairs, painted white, which, in rural theatres, are the 
 property man's concession to the classical repertoire. 
 One of the legs had been broken half way up, and the 
 other three had been sawed to correspond with this 
 infirmity. March sat down with his hands clinched as 
 if he were restraining himself. 
 
 " I shan't keep you long, and with the scenery waiting
 
 226 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 I shouldn't venture to keep you at all for a purely self 
 ish purpose ; but, Mr. March, I've found you out." 
 
 She enjoyed his startled look. 
 
 " I've tracked one of your secret, underhand, gener 
 ous acts to its lair," she went on, smilingly, " and I mean 
 to bring it out into the light of day and make it pay the 
 penalty of concealment. One would think you were 
 ashamed of your modest virtues. Oh, Mr. March," she 
 cried, changing her tone, " it was too bad of you never 
 to let me know what you had done for father ! " 
 
 March flushed a little and looked attentively at his 
 outstretched palm. 
 
 " I was glad to conceal it," he said. " It wasn't a 
 thing to be proud of. I have never forgiven myself for 
 accepting the place originally. My only excuse is that I 
 did not know your father's age and his attachment for 
 the position." 
 
 " You must let me put my own estimate on your 
 goodness. I can never tell you how much I feel it. It 
 was more than kind. It was noble ! " Her eyes filled. 
 "You were right in thinking that it would hurt father to 
 lose it. Nothing could have grieved him more. Pardon 
 me if I don't know what to say to you. I am not accus 
 tomed to having to find words for such a favor. There 
 are none. But I ask you to believe my gratitude." 
 
 She put out her hand impulsively and March took it. 
 Something in her illumined face, its frank friendliness, 
 its generous wishfulness to say her feeling, affected him 
 indescribably. He saw in her eager eyes, or thought he 
 saw, a large vision in which his doubts and perplexities 
 and questionings of the past fortnight grew ineffably 
 small. He felt that he had discredited her in not trust 
 ing the liberality of her outlook it seemed so large at
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 227 
 
 the moment. It could not avoid making some account 
 of the facts, but they were less important to it, he was 
 sure, than they had been in his thought. 
 
 Lincoln's arguments recurred to him and he found his 
 capacity and will to resist them failing from him. He 
 felt the obligation to combat them, but he could not 
 compel his tutored resolution to his aid. His scrup 
 ulously woven theories about her and their relation 
 seemed crumbling about him in a fatal ruin, and for the 
 instant he was recklessly glad. If she cared for him she 
 would not be sorry that he had spoken, and if she did 
 not, her generosity would see less than he did in his 
 offence. 
 
 He continued to hold her hand as he said in a low 
 voice, bending toward her, 
 
 " Don't use that miserly word ! There can be no such 
 thing as gratitude between us." She looked up startled. 
 " Do you think that the poor little things I have been 
 able to do have been done to win your gratitude ? It 
 has been because I loved you, though I haven't known it." 
 
 He looked into her face with a glowing tenderness 
 before which her eyes drooped. She gently withdrew 
 her hand. 
 
 " You are too good to say what you have the best 
 right to say : I have not always thought so. No, that's 
 true, and once I was brutal enough to say so." Con 
 stance blushed vividly. " I see I needn't remind you. 
 It was shameful, and I hope you believe that I have the 
 grace to feel I've no right to speak now, except such as 
 I find in your charity. I had agreed with myself never 
 to speak, and you see how I keep my resolve. I've no 
 excuse unless you call my love an excuse. That is for 
 you to say."
 
 228 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Stop ! stop ! It's treason to let you say what you 
 have said. It's disloyal to let you go on. I am already 
 bound sacredly bound." 
 
 The pain that possessed him translated itself through 
 his eyes, so that when he said, " I need not ask to 
 whom ? " she answered very gently, 
 
 " I don't know. It is to Mr. Keator. You remember 
 him ? " 
 
 " So clearly that I've no difficulty in measuring the 
 slightness of my chance against him." He rose and 
 stood by his chair while he said, " I can't presume to ask 
 your pardon for having spoken, though I think in your 
 goodness, you would grant it ; but I can say ' good 
 bye.' " 
 
 He put out his hand. She rose and took it mechani 
 cally. 
 
 " Good-bye ? " she said, slowly. " No ! no ! What do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he asked, breathlessly, as he 
 looked down into her eyes. 
 
 She resumed her throne abruptly, and he sank into 
 his seat. Constance brushed her hand lightly and 
 repeatedly over her gown, while she regarded it in 
 absorption. 
 
 " You don't understand," she said, at length, in a low 
 voice, without looking up. 
 
 " I should greatly like to," he returned, gravely. 
 
 She set her hand skimming in swifter motions over the 
 smooth surface of her gown, while she turned her head 
 half away, as women do when they wish to see a thing 
 completely. 
 
 " It is it is only temporary," she told him, looking 
 up suddenly with a smile which dazzled him.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 229 
 
 March stayed himself against his chair. 
 
 " Temporary ? What ? " he asked, huskily, as he leaned 
 forward. 
 
 " I ought not to call it that. It is as binding as any 
 engagement can be only that he will not claim its 
 fulfilment." 
 
 A light broke over March's face. 
 
 " You can't expect me to believe that ! " he said. 
 
 Constance smiled. 
 
 " Ah ! I see that I shall have to explain." 
 
 She went back and gave him some part of the history 
 of her relation with Mr. Keator. 
 
 " Poor Keator ! " exclaimed March, as she finished. 
 " No wonder his resolution failed him for a moment. 
 After such a sacrifice if he had not faltered for a little, 
 one couldn't feel sympathy with him as a fellow-man. 
 To think of his giving you up because of his duty to 
 the Church ! Compared with a surrender like that, 
 what have I ever done to merit a thought of yours ? " 
 
 Constance gave him an arch smile. 
 
 " I'm sure I can't fancy," she said, roguishly. 
 
 " It's a kind of impudence to name myself after such 
 a man," he went on, quickly, not heeding her answer, 
 " but I must know now. Dearest, I don't ask you to 
 promise anything it would be treason, as you say. But 
 I have a right to know your feeling. Constance, you 
 don't dislike me ?" 
 
 She pretended to consider a moment. 
 
 " No," she said, judicially. 
 
 " Then " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. March, Mr. Keator asked me if there was 
 no one, nothing to interfere with my keeping my promise. 
 And I told him no one nothing."
 
 230 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Her face crimsoned, and she caught out her handker 
 chief to hide it. 
 
 " Do you think," she murmured, as she looked studi 
 ously down and made fold after fold in her dress, " that 
 I ought to tell you that " 
 
 " That you have the folly to care for such a poor 
 fellow as I ? No, dearest, don't expose yourself in that 
 way. Let us take it for granted," he whispered, as he 
 drew her toward him. 
 
 "I'm afraid we are not doing right," she said, doubt 
 fully, as they began the descent of the steep stair some 
 minutes later. 
 
 " If the pleasantness of a thing proves it wrong, we 
 are committing nothing less than a crime," owned March, 
 with the complaisance of his happiness. 
 
 " I am thinking what Mr. Keator would say. But 
 what could he say ? I promised nothing, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I know. But you think that he will not claim 
 you before the year is out ? " 
 
 " You know Mr. Keator ; do you think it likely ? " 
 
 March shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I know men, and it does not seem impossible. I 
 think of my own feeling, darling," he whispered, as they 
 paused on the stairs, "and it seems certain."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 CONSTANCE'S rebellious confidence immediately after 
 her father's death that somehow he must come back, 
 that surely she should find him in his seat at table, or in 
 his accustomed reading-chair, or at worst see him come 
 driving down the long street at night, with his smile and 
 kiss for her as he alighted, was not unlike the cheating 
 assurance with which Mr. Keator indulged his aching 
 heart as he went back to his house after his farewell to 
 her. He repeated her words, and made the coach grow 
 in the air before him, but there was only a single passen 
 ger, and she was leaning out and asking, " You do not 
 wish me to stay ? You are glad I am doing this ? " His 
 envious regret that he had not dared all, and accepted 
 the sacrifice which her words had seemed to offer, passed 
 instantly into a kind of enthusiasm for her generosity. 
 And again her spirit was intensely present to him, and 
 he could not disenchant himself from the stubborn faith 
 that she must follow in person. 
 
 That night he lay awake imagining the things which 
 she would say in the situations he provided for her. But 
 they were like a manufactured mineral water. The 
 chemical constituents were there he had learned some 
 thing of the formula in his long association with her 
 but the essential principle was lacking, and nothing 
 could be more flat than the compound. It was a sort of
 
 232 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 
 
 illusion which only put her further away by its spurious- 
 ness, and he remembered sadly that one of her great 
 charms had always been the quality of surprise in her. 
 It was very well to say that one knew her ideas, her 
 opinions, even her character, but no one had the key to 
 her fancy, and it was her discriminating use of that 
 which gave one the agreeable sense of talking every day 
 with a fresh person, who was yet preciously familiar. He 
 summoned her before his disappointed vision in every 
 form, and upon every side of her nature which she had 
 made known to him. But the very likeness in' unlike- 
 ness was more bitter than to own her lost altogether. 
 
 The mere sense of void, the longing to see her, the 
 irresistible feeling that somehow the custom of yesterday 
 must be the custom of to-day, and that if it was not 
 other things must change importantly, were, however, 
 more tolerable than the contest with himself, on which 
 he entered when he rose next morning, and which he 
 knew must at length be fought squarely out, and was not 
 to be determined in a day or a month. 
 
 These are the battles that try men's strength. The 
 fierce fights decided between sunrise and sunset ask the 
 sudden bravery which most men can find for the emer 
 gency. Bunker Hill was fought with sounding music and 
 fluttering colors, the urgence of commanders, each man's 
 shoulder to his comrade's, the enemy in front, and the 
 madness-working carnage everywhere. It was a matter 
 of valor, and in the impetus of battle it is easier to be 
 valorous than to be cowardly. But when the unkempt, 
 starved, disease-smitten little army sat down at Valley 
 Forge to face the hardships of a bitter winter, bravery was 
 not the facile matter they had found it in battle. It 
 was not stirring restlessly in their hearts, waiting to be
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 233 
 
 born in cheers upon their lips. It had to be forced to 
 scorn cold and privation and nakedness. 
 
 Mr. Keator had not expected an easy victory over his 
 love, but when he had asked Constance for the tempta 
 tion with which he was now wrestling, his imagination, 
 set it the task as he might, could not go forward among 
 the slow days of the future and tell him with what pain 
 they would be filled. His trouble rose with him in the 
 morning, and made him so silent while he remained 
 in the house, that Conrad, and Benicin his faithful 
 servant asked themselves, and at length asked him, if 
 he were quite well. His difficulty was not silenced by 
 the busy occupations of the day. It was perhaps less 
 intelligible than during the long nights, but it lay with a 
 dull ache about his breast. If by chance he was dis 
 tracted from it he returned to memory with an added 
 pang. He was constantly assailed by the temptation to 
 go and see her. She was really not very distant. He 
 had but to take the coach which left the inn every other 
 morning, and by the next morning he should be with 
 her. He would sometimes plan how he might see her 
 without her knowledge, but his relentless faith to the 
 intention which he had expressed to her invariably 
 restrained him. 
 
 Save to himself he had made no promises. That was 
 the essence of his situation : he was perfectly free. He 
 might go to Quinnimont ; he might remain there as long 
 as it pleased him. She could not complain. It was she 
 who had made the promises ; she was the only one who 
 could break the literal word between them. But the 
 spirit of their agreement, the tacit contract, was infinitely 
 more sacred to him. The opportunity which she had 
 generously yielded him to regain his self-respect not
 
 234 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 merely to refuse a good which was securely out of his 
 reach, but to turn stoutly from a happiness, coveted 
 above all things in the world, and to be had for stretch 
 ing forth his hand carried with it, he felt deeply, the 
 obligation on his part to resist every approach to the 
 temptation which he had set himself. It was not alone 
 that finally he would not take what she nominally offered, 
 but that during this time of probation he would punctili 
 ously keep himself from so much as the appearance of a 
 motion toward it. 
 
 He often sought consolation in the writing of sermons, 
 whose admonitions, directed in form toward his flock, 
 whipped his secret sins. He poured his soul into these 
 compositions, and he had never preached so earnestly. 
 It was said that Mr. Keator had received a special 
 inspiration of late, and he received visits from members 
 of his church who came to thank him for words that 
 seemed spoken to their special need. 
 
 Occasionally their visits cheered him by the commun 
 ity of experience which they suggested, but he seldom 
 found heart to palliate his own inclinations to sin, with 
 knowledge that others were tempted like him. Even 
 the elders spoke of the " wise and godly discourses " 
 which induced them to hope that he was regaining his 
 health, although one of them mentioned in private that 
 " somehow Mr. Keator isn't looking right." 
 
 On a Sunday about a month after Constance had gone, 
 he preached from the text, " Thinkest thou that I can 
 not now pray to my Father and He shall presently give 
 me more than twelve legions of angels ? " and drew 
 from it the lesson of the genuine self-sacrifice not the 
 kind of denial which turns from desired things because 
 of lack of energy, or to win the world's applause, or
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 235 
 
 declines an impossible joy ; but the rare, costly sort 
 which nobly will not take that which fairly belongs to it, 
 because it willingly bows to a higher right.* This ser 
 mon gave him great comfort both in the writing and 
 delivery, for it set before him with inevitable clearness 
 his whole duty and the highest thing toward which he 
 was set to strive in the contest that engaged him. It 
 stirred his hearers also, and that which seemed to them 
 in it the wholesome ring of earnestness was no worse for 
 being also the ring of experience. 
 
 The duties of his calling were certainly abundant 
 enough to busy his mind. But care could not solace the 
 incessant longing at his heart. The soldier's knapsack 
 is not less a burden, we know, because his feet have 
 occupation ; and the love, which he was making it his 
 business to rid himself of, constantly weighed his 
 spirit, whatever labor he might be about. His peo 
 ple, who were not extraordinarily observant, said among 
 themselves that Mr. Keator's usual abstraction increased. 
 But they could not complain of his want of diligence. 
 In all the good works of the Church he was more than 
 ever assiduous. 
 
 He visited his people privately more often than had 
 been his wont, and strove to absorb himself in their 
 spiritual needs. Physical necessities they had very few, 
 for all were on a comfortable level of prosperity, and 
 their constant, scrupulous, and varied industry gave them 
 the best right to that ease about the affairs of this world 
 which leaves leisure and peace of mind for thought of 
 the next. Mr. Keator liked now, too, to go among his 
 flock at their work and content himself with the sight of 
 
 * The originality of this interpretation with Mr. Keator, the writer 
 wishes to disclaim.
 
 236 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 their fruitful energy. He had a sound and thrifty sense 
 about matters of money and every day needs, as they 
 touched the welfare of his people, which might have 
 surprised one who had approached him only on the side 
 of his finely sensitive mental and spiritual organization. 
 It is true that he was by nature impractical ; but we 
 know how men subvert their most stubborn characteris 
 tics, and teach themselves to do strange things for a 
 great love. Such a love Mr. J^eator bore his Church, 
 and especially those members of its mystical body over 
 whom he had been set. He had an affectionate feeling 
 for each one of them, and a sympathetic understanding 
 of their characters. Those whom he watched over, and 
 guided, and loved, as a shepherd does his sheep, could 
 not fail to give him back his affection ; and as he walked 
 through the clock-works and the other factories from 
 which work came stamped with a better trademark, in 
 the knowledge that Moravian faithfulness had guided its 
 making, than all mercantile branding could give it and 
 went among the brethren at their work in the well-kept 
 fields the produce of which purchasers were glad of, 
 because of their trust in farmers who scanted no measure 
 and left the large potatoes at the bottom all whom 
 he met turned their faces at his greeting with a smile of 
 keen liking. The women looked up from their work, 
 within doors, with glances softer, because they were 
 woman's glances, but with the same meaning in them 
 a meaning grateful to the minister in these days of self- 
 distrust. The sense of this atmosphere of faithfulness 
 to the common duties of life began, too, to have a new 
 preciousness to him. He liked to feel it encompassing 
 him. It breathed scorchingly upon the thought of the 
 smallest disloyalty.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 237 
 
 One afternoon as he was leaving the choir-house of 
 the Single Sisters, he found himself at the rear door 
 way confronted by Sister Zelda's kindly old face. She 
 was just going out to the garden, which was her especial 
 charge. 
 
 " It is pleasant to see you again, Sister Zelda," said 
 the minister, taking her hand. " They told me you had 
 not been well." 
 
 " I have kept my room for a day or more. An old 
 woman must expect it, you know." She smiled, but she 
 looked sharply over her spectacles to ask him, " What 
 do you hear from Constance Sister Constance, if it is 
 right that I should call her so ? " 
 
 " I think you may call her Sister Constance, Sister 
 Zelda," he returned, gravely. " I like best to think of 
 her as still one of us, though she has gone away. I did 
 not ask her to give up her position among us. She cares 
 enough for us, I am sure, not to wish utterly to sever 
 herself from that link to the memory of her father ; and 
 on our side we must remember, I think, that she is Dr. 
 Van Cleef's daughter, and as such has a very especial 
 claim upon us. He did much for the Church, and loved 
 it ; and none of us should harbor a thought of ill-will 
 toward him because he had been away from us so long 
 as to forget some of our rules, or against her because in 
 her young pride she violated them." 
 
 " Nay, I should be much rejoiced to welcome her back. 
 All of us would. She has no enemies among the sisters 
 or brethren." 
 
 " No, no ; I hope not. I hope not. She has most 
 generous intentions toward us, I may tell you in con 
 fidence." 
 
 " That is like her," exclaimed Sister Zelda. " Will
 
 238 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 you come out and watch me at my gardening?" she 
 asked. " I must not lose time in idleness after missing 
 so many good hours through my little sickness. I am 
 getting old for the work up-stairs. They would rather 
 keep spryer hands for the bread-winning work. But the 
 garden is left to me. Even an old woman may mind 
 that, and I must mind it well. Come out into the sun 
 shine here, if you are in no haste, and we will talk 
 together while I work." 
 
 She set herself briskly to the use of her trowel, while 
 Mr. Keator stood before her on the other side of the 
 bed, talking as he liked to do with this shrewd, light- 
 hearted, gentle, little old woman about the affairs of the 
 Church. He found sometimes more wisdom in her 
 quick comments than in the deliberate pronouncements 
 of the elders. But after they had discussed Church 
 concerns for some time, they suddenly came back to 
 questions more immediately within the range of personal 
 feeling. 
 
 " You did not tell me what you hear from Sister Con 
 stance?" 
 
 " No ; I don't hear," answered the minister, briefly. 
 
 " She is with her aunt in Maryland still." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I believe so. I have no reason to doubt 
 it." 
 
 " And where is Mr. March ? " 
 
 Mr. Keator looked as if he did not understand the 
 connection of the thoughts, but he replied at once, 
 
 " In England, I suppose. He went back, you 
 remember, on account of the death of his brother." 
 
 " Mr. Keator, did you think she had truly fixed her 
 eyes upon him ?" 
 
 The minister hesitated. " That was not the question,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 239 
 
 you know," he said. " It was the effect of their associa 
 tion upon the others. That was what made the reproof 
 needful after giving her due private warning. But I 
 was very sorry Elder Weiss went so far." 
 
 This may have seemed to Sister Zelda like avoiding 
 the question. At all events she brought the minister 
 respectfully back to the subject of her inquiry. " Yes, 
 yes, I did think Elder Weiss too hard, though of course 
 it isn't for me to doubt the wisdom of the elders. If 
 they weren't in love, it seems as if that might make them 
 so." 
 
 This inclusion of March's feeling did not make the 
 topic more agreeable to Mr. Keator. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes ; I thought of that, and it was bitter to 
 me," he exclaimed, thinking aloud, unconsciously. " But 
 I had no right to consider the consequences." 
 
 " No, you had your duty, though there might be godly 
 ministers, methinks, who would not have such strict 
 notions of duty in a matter like that." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but I was bound to be strict, because I was 
 tempted to be lenient." 
 
 " Yet she was only a girl. It was hard to wound her 
 so." 
 
 " Very hard," assented Mr. Keator. 
 
 And after a time he went away, fancying that he had 
 kept his secret from this shrewd dame. 
 
 But his impalpable sense touching March, thus given 
 an outward embodiment, shamed him. He began to fear 
 that he had been jealous of him. And what right had he 
 to be jealous ? Few things could have cut this sensitive 
 man deeper than this thought ; and he threw himself 
 with even more than his former vigor into his labors for 
 the Church. 
 16
 
 240 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 In the pleasures which were dear to him he indulged 
 himself less and less. He seldom now went into the 
 woods to gather flowers, and his herbarium was thickly 
 overlaid with dust. He summoned the brethren and sis 
 ters more frequently to Sprechens, and in this form of pri 
 vate spiritual confession encouraged and admonished 
 them fervently. As he grew more rigorous with himself he 
 unconsciously set up more inflexible standards for them, 
 and young sisters would sometimes return to their choir- 
 houses, after one of these intimate conversations with 
 their pastor, wondering what had made Mr. Keator so 
 strict of late. 
 
 The numerous festivals and anniversaries of the Church 
 be became more than commonly eager to have duly cele 
 brated. Beginning with the kindcrstund, or children's 
 meeting, each choir had its special days set apart, and at 
 different times in every week each had its services. 
 
 Conrad began to assist him in some part of his work, 
 but Mr. Keator did as much as possible himself. The 
 yearly gcmein fest (the anniversary of the consecration of 
 the church), the feast of the elders, the house feasts (in 
 celebration of the consecration of the various choir- 
 houses), the brethren's, widows', and sisters' feast, together 
 with most of the regular festivals of the English 
 Church, properly afforded occupation for more than one 
 minister. Mr. Keator, however, only allowed Conrad's 
 help upon the plea of a kind of preliminary training for 
 him. He alleged that he needed no assistance, and in 
 proof of this required more of his strength than it could 
 give. His pale face became unnaturally colorless ; his 
 energy grew more and more a matter of will, and the 
 Advent season found him much broken both in body 
 and mind. The elders urged him to take a vacation,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 241 
 
 and found him unexpectedly willing. He would go to 
 New York, he said. He was expecting the arrival of a 
 young lady by a vessel which would soon be due. An 
 uncertain smile went about among the elders at this an 
 nouncement, and Elder Reidel who, in his capacity of 
 admirer of Constance's voice, was accustomed still to 
 maintain its superiority when music was discussed said, 
 
 " What you say, Brother Keator, makes our errand 
 easier. We do not think of marriages among the breth 
 ren as they do in the world outside, and as we are all 
 brothers together in Christ" Elder Reidel hesitated 
 a moment and looked at his finger-nails, while Mr. Keator 
 wondered, with a sick feeling about his heart, what was 
 coming. " We are working for the same end, and you 
 tell him, Brother Berg ! " he entreated helplessly, sitting 
 down. 
 
 " Nay," said the elder, " it is rather your office." 
 
 " Well, you see, it's this way, Brother Keator," contin 
 ued Elder Reidel, desperately. His florid cheeks grew 
 more red than usual, and the lines of his good-natured 
 face, in which merriment sat at other times, were full of 
 perplexity. " We would like to see you well married, that 
 is all." He wiped his forehead. " Of course, with 
 proper submission of the question to the Lord by lot and 
 the approval of the Council, for it is wisely said that the 
 minister's marriage is of public importance, and not 
 ' not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly,' " he con 
 cluded, with a sense of relief in finding the sentence 
 ready made to his hands. 
 
 " W T e do not presume to advise," said Elder Weiss ; 
 " we merely suggest." 
 
 Elder Englehart, who had sat quietly listening, inter 
 posed with,
 
 242 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " You must not misunderstand us, brother ; we have 
 no call to make or meddle in the matter. We know that. 
 But as brethren together we have taken thought 
 for you. You have not seemed well of late and per 
 haps we do not mean to pry, brother not quite happy. 
 You have no head in your household, and you remember 
 the scripture words, ' It is not good for man to live 
 alone.' " 
 
 Brother Berg, who felt easier, although Mr. Keator 
 said nothing, but simply looked rather quizzically from 
 one to the other as they spoke, said that they ought to 
 add that his marriage would be for the Church's advant 
 age also. 
 
 " That looks as if we had been saying one word for you 
 and two for ourselves," he owned, with his broad, com 
 plaisant smile. " But we do not mean that. It would 
 be for our good that you should take a discreet woman to 
 yourself. That is true ; but much more for your own. 
 I would not go to speak of my own experience " 
 
 Brother Berg indulged a mysterious smile and watched 
 himself twirl his thumbs. 
 
 The other elders smiled with him, for Mistress Berg 
 was notoriously the ruler of her mild husband. Mr. Kea 
 tor rubbed his shaven chin, and tapped with his crutch the 
 hearth before which he sat in a deep, leathern chair. The 
 embarrassment of the group visibly renewed itself while 
 they waited for him to speak. 
 
 " I thank you for your interest, brothers," he said, at 
 length, gently. " What you have said shall receive my 
 attention. It is fair to tell you that it has already en 
 gaged a share of it. I have not been unmindful of the pro 
 priety of marrying. You are right, I think, in believing 
 that a minister's power for good is multiplied when he
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 243 
 
 takes a proper wife, and to that end, as you have deli 
 cately refrained from saying, the Church advises early 
 marriages among her clergy. You will believe that I 
 
 have always felt this, but I circumstances in which . 
 
 My dear brethren, may I not ask for some time to con 
 sider your suggestion ? It comes somewhat unexpect 
 edly. Upon my return " 
 
 "Then the young woman whom you are to meet ? " 
 
 hesitated Elder Berg. 
 
 " Is my sister. I ought to have told you that. She 
 has been for some years at school in England. I hope 
 to have her with me permanently now." 
 
 The elders made their exclamations and congratula 
 tions, and took their departure. But Mr. Keator remained 
 for a long time in his chair before the fire, reflecting, 
 with some self-accusation, upon the incident. He won 
 dered whether the elders represented the general desire 
 of his congregation. If they did, he felt that it brought 
 what suddenly seemed to him his paltering with his feel 
 ings to an issue. He must either give up the smallest 
 thought of Constance or his pastorate. If the congrega 
 tion wished a married minister and surely it was a fair 
 desire who was he that he should oppose them ? The 
 test of himself which he was making, for a moment 
 seemed fantastic, but immediately all his finer senses rose 
 to protest its reasonableness. Yet somehow, it must be 
 brought to an end. In other words, he must put Con 
 stance wholly out of his thought, and as he stated this to 
 himself he groaned in conscious weakness at the memory 
 of her dearness, and the impossibility of an act that alien 
 ated her. The harassed minister rose impetuously, and 
 kneeling before his chair prayed fervently for strength.
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE coming of Rose Keator brought about many 
 changes. She did not look like a revolutionist with her 
 flaxen hair, and blue eyes set in her bright face, but from 
 the moment she entered her brother's plain house she 
 began, as people from afar will, to try things by her 
 standards, and when they failed by these maidenly meas 
 ures she set herself to bring about the proper corres 
 pondence. She observed to herself at once, for instance, 
 that her brother's home was the home of a bachelor. 
 
 " Poor brother ! " she exclaimed. " Is this the way 
 you have been living?" 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, dear, but I think Ben- 
 icia has changed nothing on account of your arrival." 
 
 " Unpapered walls, uncarpeted floors, books and news 
 papers everywhere ! " she went on, recounting the enor 
 mities to herself. " Does Benicia ever dust ? " 
 
 " Not here. I should never find any thing. I'm 
 afraid of her." 
 
 " I shall make you afraid of me," she cried, laughing, 
 as she led the way to the adjoining room. 
 
 " You are at liberty to do anything you like ; only 
 remember the amount of my stipend." 
 
 " One can be neat on very little," replied Rose, slyly. 
 
 Conrad accompanied them while she inspected the 
 house in her travelling dress. 
 
 " There is space enough," she said. " It will make a
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 245 
 
 nice little house for our small family ; but you have not 
 been treating it well." 
 
 Conrad was amused. 
 
 " We are not housekeepers," he said, with a smile which 
 prepared Rose to like him. 
 
 " I see I must make friends with the one who holds 
 that office," answered the girl. 
 
 " She has been very faithful. You must approach her 
 gently," said Mr. Keator. 
 
 " She shan't know that she is being supplanted, and 
 I shall hope to make her believe that she wishes all that 
 I shall do. I've been living very simply, but I see I 
 shall have to bring out all my store of diplomacy, John," 
 she said, laying her hand absently on his shoulder. 
 
 It was long since he had seen his sister, and he remem 
 bered her only as a child. He was charmed with her. 
 Her caressing touch was a kind of balm. The family 
 amenities, the endearments among kindred had been a 
 forgotten thing to him for many years. Now that he 
 knew them again they were indescribably sweet. He 
 felt that his sister's pure presence was a kind of guard 
 against wrong of any kind. To have some one always 
 near who had faith in one by the tie of blood, and a 
 right to complain if her faith was abused, was to be 
 hedged by a secure barrier against every species of 
 wrong-doing. 
 
 Lacking the protection of both father and mother, 
 Rose had been thrown, from her infancy, entirely upon 
 her brother's care, and the pains which her nurture and 
 education had cost him were not things to diminish his 
 affection for her, while she looked up to him gratefully 
 as her childish hero. When her sensible training at the 
 excellent provincial school in which he had placed her
 
 246 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 was complete, she had found, for a few years, a home in 
 a family whose members had been friends of her mother. 
 She had taught the children, and occupied herself with 
 the duties of a governess under the most urbane disci 
 pline and mild requirements. Her experience had natur 
 ally imparted a certain independence to her character, 
 but it had not robbed it of its essential gentleness and 
 grace. She was known for her energy, which was indom 
 itable, though not of the restless sort which deprives 
 the subject of its kindly efforts of comfort, in order to 
 make them comfortable. 
 
 She went about the reform of her brother's house with 
 modest but relentless vigor. Her revolutions were 
 wrought with the quickness and secrecy of conspiracy, 
 and were usually accomplished, after the ingenious wom 
 anly manner, when no men were about to interfere. She 
 caused Mr. Keator to spend a day with her in Philadel 
 phia, where she surprised the deliberate shopkeepers by 
 her uncommon familiarity with her own wishes, and the 
 alertness of her decisions touching papers and carpets. 
 They must have something simple, she said, but some 
 thing pretty and not expensive. This difficult desider 
 atum she secured, despite the protestations of the shop 
 keepers that they had not what she wanted. She waited 
 patiently until they had proved themselves wrong, and 
 then gently declined their offers of richer articles offers 
 made in a manner which ought to have convinced any 
 one of his mistake in imagining that he knew what he 
 desired. 
 
 When she returned to Judea she called in the services 
 of a brother, who had served an apprenticeship to a 
 paper-hanger before joining the community and, with 
 Benicia and one of the young boys as carpet layers, she
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 247 
 
 worked a transformation in the course of a week which 
 won Mr. Keator's praise. He had not been accustomed 
 to reckon with the adornments of life, but he recognized 
 their grace and efficacy now that they were offered him, 
 and he began to have a sense of pride in such a sister. 
 The neatness and propriety of his table, Rose's becom 
 ing presidency at the head of it, the ingenious devices of 
 her planning for making his life smooth in all ways, gave 
 him genuine satisfaction. He would not have supposed 
 himself capable of finding pleasure in such things, but 
 the charm of them grew upon him. He began to enjoy 
 her energy, which spent itself wisely but unsparingly 
 upon the mysterious needs of housekeeping. Benicia had 
 not given him the idea that there was so much to do, and 
 he began to tell his sister that he fancied she invented 
 work to keep her hands busy. 
 
 " We never did so much before," he declared. 
 
 "You were camping out, you know, brother." 
 
 " I hope we have begun to live in a fit dwelling," he 
 said, taking her hand with his kindly smile. 
 
 " Do you like it ? " 
 
 " I like everything, dear everything that you've 
 done." He stooped and kissed her. "You have been a 
 magician to the house ; but the best thing in it will 
 always be its mistress." 
 
 Her light laugh in the old parsonage seemed to imbue 
 him with its cheerfulness ; her womanly step and car 
 riage, the rustle of her brief skirts, the deft, vision- 
 endowed fingers that went before him everywhere for 
 his comfort, her trim little figure at the fireside, even her 
 anxious squaring of the dinner-table grew dear to him. 
 
 In his pleasure in her presence the tormenting thoughts 
 which had haunted his loneliness retreated, and only
 
 248 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 
 
 attacked him at intervals. He sunned himself in the 
 light of Rose's affectionate care for him. In this com 
 plaisant humor he was ready to believe, as was indeed 
 partly true, that his people, who began to love his sister, 
 would see how nearly she filled the place which they 
 desired to see filled, and be content until he could solve 
 his difficulty. If they only wished to see him happy it 
 seemed to him that his present condition must be entirely 
 satisfying to them. He was also much stronger recently. 
 
 Rose was an unimpeachable Moravian, and she went 
 about the work of the choirs and the Church with the 
 energy of her housekeeping. " The Messiah " was in 
 course of rehearsal for Christmas, and engaged much of 
 her attention. She was offered a solo part, but declined 
 it for the office of leader of the girls' chorus. She said 
 that she thought she could be more useful there, which 
 was another way of saying that the place enabled her to 
 multiply the force of her musical training, which had 
 been uncommonly full, instead of barrenly exhibiting it. 
 Her devotion to the girls' chorus when she had taken it 
 up was strenuous. The constant use of music among 
 the Moravians made them apt pupils, and it was one of 
 Rose's pleasures to gather them about the old organ in 
 the Sisters' Choir-house, and play over Handel's inspir 
 ing music. It spoke dearly to her of the things which 
 she knew, and most sweetly of the myriad mysterious 
 things which she only guessed and dreamed ; and to 
 these thoughts the clear voices of the girls made harmo 
 nious accompaniment. 
 
 She found time, too, to interest herself in mission 
 work, and assisted in the making up of a box sent to 
 Greenland full of clothing, with a scanty provision of 
 cates and comfits tucked away in the corners. In the
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 249 
 
 Sisters' Choir there was a missionary cupboard, from 
 which colored representations of scenes in the Saviour's 
 life and certain tracts were added to the box, for the 
 Greenlanders* education. But the Christmas festival 
 pressed too closely to allow any work less urgent to 
 occupy her long. Rose had many gifts to make for her 
 new friends, and as presents of the season were, by cus 
 tom and partly of necessity, usually the work of the 
 giver's hands, this involved much labor. She knitted 
 work-bags, gauntlets and muffettees ; for the old women 
 she made pretty caps of muslin with a close-clipped bank 
 of black ribbon atop ; for the children she prepared 
 sweetmeats and confections of every sort. 
 
 She was obliged to duplicate many of her gifts, and 
 the gathering of pasteboard alumette stands, covered 
 with luminous paper, which sat on her table Christmas 
 eve, was a small host. All the day preceding Christ 
 mas she spent gilding walnuts, stringing popped corn, 
 and making lace stockings, to be filled with candy for 
 the tree which was displayed to the children that even 
 ing before the regular Christmas eve services. Mr. Kea- 
 tor, who had the faculty of talking to children, told them 
 the story of the Christ-child, and for the time forgot all 
 pains in watching their simple glee as their gifts were 
 handed to them, and they gazed in childish rapture on 
 the tree, brilliantly alight with honey-scented candles. 
 His sister was busiest among the group that unloaded 
 the tree for the children, and her nimble fingers out 
 stripped the uneager motions of the sisters. 
 
 It was good to see the smile with which she accompanied 
 each gift, and as she went beamingly about the burdened 
 pine she seemed to Mr. Keator a spirit of happiness 
 sent for his solace and cheer. He did not wish to absorb
 
 250 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 all her healing force ; he felt selfish as it was. Such 
 grace and benediction ought to be for all the world. 
 But as he stood observing her he was deeply grateful for 
 his share in it, and humbly wondered what he had done 
 to merit it. His heart was full of the Christmas peace 
 which harbors no thought less than the largest, and, when 
 he rose to preach in the church that night, after the love- 
 feast, the people saw a calm light in his face not born of 
 this world's meditations. 
 
 He had intended to speak to them directly of the 
 event which was to be celebrated on the morrow, but the 
 feeling at his heart was too strong, and he imparted it to 
 them in earnest phrases which reached his hearers, 
 because each word was charged with its yearning to tes 
 tify of the light which he had found. " And they mur 
 mured against him," was his text. He pictured the dis 
 trust and complaining impatience of Christ's teaching 
 during his earthly ministry. He said that a like weak 
 ness possessed the restless souls of the present who 
 could not brook the slow justifying of God's purposes, 
 who chafed under difficulty and disaster, and were not 
 able to turn their eyes forward contentedly to the 
 future, in which all things should be made right. 
 
 " Patience, I know, brethren, is a hard word. It is 
 one of the greatest gifts of grace. To face a barren life 
 with its every-day desolateness, to wait calmly for the 
 sure light and help, with your present problem or sorrow 
 confronting you from hour to hour, is not easy. But 
 trust in God, unquenchable faith in the design which you 
 cannot see, will make it easier. We shall all waver in seek 
 ing them : no one knows that more sadly than your min 
 ister ; but at length, even in this life, your happiness will 
 come out of your grief or difficulty ; the word will be
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 251 
 
 spoken, the key handed you, and in the illumination of 
 your content the path behind you will be made plain. 
 In that light, how ungrateful our murmurings, how 
 wicked our rebellion ! Let us strive for that perfect sub- 
 missiveness which shall finally be rewarded by the peace 
 that passeth all understanding." 
 
 His audience could not make the personal application ; 
 they only saw that his eloquence had from some source 
 gained a higher note. Rose marvelled at her brother's 
 eloquence. She had often heard him preach since her 
 arrival, but to-night he seemed to weave a spell about 
 her ; she listened motionless, and when he had done, re 
 leased herself from his influence with a sigh of pleasure. 
 
 As Mr. Keator came down the pulpit stairs she 
 endeavored to catch his eye, and when she had suc 
 ceeded gave him a look of restrained joy and pride. He 
 came to her at once and they went out together. In the 
 courtyard without, among the choir-houses, they stood 
 in the snow watching the brethren and sisters emerge 
 from the church, each with a lighted waxen taper in his 
 hand, singing, " Hark ! the Herald Angels Sing," to 
 Mendelssohn's music. 
 
 The candles illumined the snow in patches and threw 
 their moving shadows on its glittering surface. The 
 groups, dividing and making avenues of light among the 
 gray old buildings, sang as they went to their several 
 choir-houses, and the brother and sister heard the sound 
 fading and then die quite away, save in the Sisters' House, 
 from within which the clear, rejoicing sopranos were 
 borne, softened to their ears as they stood listening in 
 the darkness : 
 
 " Hark ! the herald angels sing, 
 Glory to the new born king ! "
 
 252 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Rose took her brother's arm and they walked slowly 
 home. Occasional candles in the hands of the married 
 brethren went flickering down the freshly whitened 
 street. In the keen air the footfalls of the two cut the 
 new fallen snow with a sharp, crunching sound which 
 went echoing down the silent road. Mr. Keator paused 
 to button his well-worn great-coat about him. The 
 numerous charities and good works of the Church, to 
 which he loved to give from his slender stipend, kept 
 him poor, and his own clothing was the last thing which 
 he considered. 
 
 Rose had endeavored to induce him to buy a new 
 great-coat when they were in Philadelphia, but he had 
 gently refused. 
 
 " This does very well," he had said ; but he had told 
 himself that he could not afford both the fresh house 
 hold decorations and the coat, and it was not in his 
 heart to deny her the innocent purchases she had planned. 
 
 As he drew the garment more tightly about his slim 
 figure and grasped his crutch he drew her arm closely 
 within his. 
 
 "John, do you often preach like that ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't know. Did it help you ? " 
 
 " Yes, and it must have helped others. That is the 
 kind of sermon, I fancy, which reaches every one. Did 
 you see old Sister Zelda lean over and shake hands with 
 me at the end ? She wanted me to thank you for it. It 
 seemed to speak to every-day needs. Where did you 
 learn so much about them, brother ? Not in your musty 
 library ? " 
 
 " No, in my musty heart. It has not grown so old yet 
 that it has not some human weaknesses of its own." 
 
 " Was it a sermon of experience ? "
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 253 
 
 " Did you detect the personal cast ? " 
 
 She glanced at him curiously in the darkness. 
 
 " Poor Joha ! You have not passed through all the 
 struggles that you pictured ? " 
 
 " I am afraid it was more or less autobiography. And 
 do you know, Rose, what the light was that came to teach 
 me the sin of murmuring and brought me content ? " 
 
 " How can I guess ? " 
 
 " It was the little maid beside me, dear. You can't 
 imagine how rebellious I was before you came." 
 
 " You overrate her ; but I don't understand, brother." 
 
 Mr. Keator was silent a moment. The old watchman 
 paced slowly by them with his staff and lantern, crying, 
 as he bade them a merry Christmas : 
 
 " Hear, brethren, hear ! 
 
 The hour of nine is come ! 
 Keep pure each heart, 
 
 And chasten every home ! " 
 
 Rose caught a glimpse of her brother's face as the 
 lantern's rays smote it. Memory had seized upon him, 
 and the anguished look upon his narrow-drawn visage 
 almost frightened her. 
 
 " Why, John," she exclaimed, " what are you thinking 
 of ? What troubles you ? " 
 
 " Nothing in the present, dear ; something that is 
 quite past, I hope." 
 
 " Don't tell me unless you wish." 
 
 They were passing a window out of which the light of a 
 thousand fireflies seemed to burn and twinkle. A gather 
 ing of children romped about a shining tree, laden with 
 bon-bons and bright-colored balls, stars and flags, 
 golden walnuts, tissue baskets and some of Rose's own 
 lace stockings rilled with candy. At one side was a
 
 254 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 model of Herrnhut, the mother Moravian settlement, in 
 moss and pasteboard ; an avenue of lime-trees joined 
 it with Bertholdsdorf, on the left, and lying under the 
 same mossy mountain. Near the window was a miniature 
 Bethlehem with a copious heaven of stars, amid which the 
 angels swam in a glow of light. Below were the shep 
 herds, the little white houses, and in the centre the inn 
 and the open manger, holding the Christ-child. Over 
 all, in an illumined semi-circle, one read the legend : 
 " Unto you a child is born ; unto you a son is given." 
 It was very simple art, but the mother sat in the midst of 
 these joyous tableaux touching the harpsichord softly 
 and glancing over her shoulder at her children's hap 
 piness, and the pretty scene was such a picture of love 
 and peace as any beholder must have been gladder for. 
 Mr. Keator turned away with an unspoken joy in his 
 heart, and Rose fancied she saw a new intelligence 
 gleaming from his eyes as if he had just given a mes 
 senger grateful audience. 
 
 " No, Rose," he said, as they walked on ; "I want to 
 tell you. With the air full of the Christmas message, 
 how should I be at rest concealing it ? That is what 
 gives the confessional its hold," he mused. " Yes, yes, 
 the feeling that somehow avowal shifts a share of the 
 wrong by making it so far public, the sense that in away 
 forgiveness is begun, the sight of a visible pardoner 
 standing as vicar to the unseeable All-pardoner yes, 
 yes, all that has comfort for infirm human nature. I 
 can't tell you how I feel that to-night. Such a constant 
 bustle goes on in my head. It's impossible to be sure 
 that even now I have found the end. It seems so these 
 Christmas sights and sounds but 1 don't know, I want 
 to get it before myself."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 255 
 
 They were in front of their door, and he pushed her 
 gently in while he continued, 
 
 " And yet I hope that it is not only that poor, selfish 
 purpose. I feel that I owe it to you. For it is you, 
 Rose, who brought the light. I have told you that." 
 
 Rose silently let him take her shawl and outer cap, 
 and went with him into the library. She seated herself 
 upon the hassock at his feet, while he took his usual 
 chair. He did not light a candle, but stirred the fading 
 embers, and threw fresh wood on the andirons. For 
 some moments he leaned back in his chair, giving rein 
 to his melancholy memory ; then he took one of her 
 hands in his and began his story in a low voice. 
 
 Rose looked for a time into the fire when he had done, 
 and when she spoke at length kept her eyes fixed upon 
 the vagrant flames. She leaned an arm upon his 
 knee. 
 
 " Poor John ! " she exclaimed, softly. Then of a 
 sudden, " You never could abuse such confidence. What 
 made you fear that you could ? " 
 
 " Ah, did I fancy that I could propose to abandon my 
 ministry for love of her ? After that what may not hap 
 pen ? I seem to be just forming acquaintance with 
 myself, to be treading fresh ground. I don't know when 
 I may sink through." 
 
 " You mean that you didn't ; that is over now, you 
 know." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I trust so," he returned, not quite easily, as 
 he leaned a little forward and rubbed his forefinger and 
 thumb together thoughtfully. 
 
 Both were silent for a long time, and his arm stole 
 about her where she sat. Rose broke the stillness at 
 last with,
 
 256 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " John, do you remember how I used to lie awake 
 Christmas eve waiting for Santa Claus, and how you 
 would come in late, after your studies, to kiss me and 
 see that I was sleeping well ? You know I used to pre 
 tend to be asleep, and the next morning when I had 
 emptied the stocking you had filled I would confess. 
 Dear old John, how I used to deceive you ! " 
 
 " Ah, those were sweet times ! " 
 
 " But not better than to-day do you think so, John ? " 
 
 " No, no ! God is good. Great joy comes with our 
 added pains." 
 
 " You would not have had it all otherwise, John. 
 Look back. You would not have denied yourself the 
 privilege of loving her if you could." 
 
 " Understanding what was to follow ? " 
 
 " Yes, even understanding what was to follow." 
 
 He drew his bushy eyebrows together. 
 
 " No, surely no. Not to have known her that would 
 have been the greatest calamity." 
 
 " It is very hard that you can not marry her," she 
 exclaimed, abruptly taking a look at the matter from the 
 other side. 
 
 " Pray, don't consider it in that way. I am sufficiently 
 inclined to rebel as it is." 
 
 " Dear brother, don't mistake me. It is hard, but you 
 are taking the only right way. I praise your courage in 
 giving yourself the temptation. I feel its difficulty. 
 But you know I ought not even to speak of it as a 
 possibility you know how I should despise you if you 
 should yield." 
 
 Her hard words cheered him. 
 
 " Not a thousandth so much as I should despise 
 myself. And yet I am living upon the edge of it every
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 257 
 
 day. Don't talk of it as impossible. It is its very pos 
 sibility that gives it value as a trial." 
 
 " It is a severe trial." 
 
 He stroked her golden hair upon which the fire-light 
 played. 
 
 " Don't think of it, sister. It is enough for one to 
 bear it. You speak of my courage. It was the poor 
 courage of the moment. If I had fancied the load which 
 it would bring with it, which I carry about with me every 
 day even now, since you have come, since I have won 
 comparative peace, my most shameless self-flattery will 
 not let me believe I should have found the strength." 
 
 Rose fell into a deep study, gazing at the fire. She 
 took her arm from his knee, and setting her elbows upon 
 her lap supported her cheeks between her hands. 
 
 " She was in love with some one else," said she, sud 
 denly. 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " 
 
 " Because if she had not been she would have done 
 more than esteem you. She would have loved you as 
 you loved her," exclaimed the girl, with conviction. 
 
 She clasped her hands about her knee, and sat staring 
 into the fire, allowing the weight of this assurance to 
 reach her brother. She had at least secured his silence 
 for a few moments. 
 
 " I can't think so well of myself as that." he said. 
 
 " You need not, brother ; only think of him. Who 
 was he ? Didn't you speak of a young Englishman ? " 
 
 " Mr. March ? There was certainly " began Mr. 
 Keator. 
 
 " Mr. March, that is it," cried Rose. " Where was 
 he ? Where did he stay while he was here ? " 
 
 " At Dr. Van Cleef's," answered the minister.
 
 258 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Of course. And there he met Miss Van Cleef, and 
 saw her every day, and " 
 
 " Don't, don't, Rose ! Don't make me think that. I 
 should be grieved to think that. Remember, I haven't 
 thoroughly conquered even yet." 
 
 " Oh, pardon me, brother. I didn't mean to hurt you. 
 And yet it was the natural conclusion. He was in love 
 with her, wasn't he ? " 
 
 " No no, no ! I hope I can say truthfully now that it 
 was not so. At one time it was my selfish fear as if, if 
 I loved her, I should not wish that she should be happy 
 in her own way but no," he said, slowly, " no, I think 
 not." 
 
 " Don't you mean that you wish to think not ? What 
 reason have you for thinking that it is not so ? " 
 
 Rose turned her face up toward his, earnestly. 
 
 " You don't ask easy questions, Rose ? " 
 
 " No," she assented, gently. 
 
 " And the answer to this one would take a long time. 
 Aren't you tired and sleepy after your work about the 
 tree ? " 
 
 " John ! " she exclaimed, reproachfully. " Do you 
 think I shall ever be tired when I can do anything for 
 you ? " 
 
 It was characteristic of him that in telling her the 
 long history of his passion for Constance he should have 
 omitted all mention of the barrier to his union with her. 
 He had said that, complying with her father's wish, 
 she had offered to yield to his desire and marry him. 
 She was, however, not a member of the Church, and 
 in other ways, not stated, would not prove acceptable to 
 the Conference. This had been the temptation before 
 which he had fallen. To have spoken of March, of his
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 259 
 
 warning to Constance, and the final reproof in the church 
 would have involved a certain reflection upon Constance, 
 and especially would have put his own conduct in a light 
 which he feared would win her praise and pity two 
 things from which he modestly shrank. In telling the 
 story now he put the worst face he could conjure upon 
 his acts, but as he would not depart from the truth, 
 Rose's murmurs of admiration interrupted him. 
 
 " It was a bitter temptation," he concluded. " And 
 when she was good enough to say that there might be 
 worse lots than to be my wife 
 
 " Worse lots ! " broke in Rose, with emphasis. " I 
 should hope so." 
 
 " Nay, was it in any way a high lot ? Remember her 
 breeding, her education. Looking at it superficially, dear, 
 what was there to tempt her, and less ah, much less, if 
 she looked beneath ? This is not a large place, and she was 
 born for the city. I used always to see that in the midst of 
 the blind hope that hoped against all these facts. A 
 clergyman upon a small salary, in a small village the 
 home of a people with whose faith and life she had no 
 sympathy ! What was there in that prospect to lead her 
 to forsake the assured prosperity and brilliancy of the 
 life I knew she had planned for herself ? " 
 
 " You forget that you were that clergyman," said 
 Rose, with the softest suggestion of a smile. 
 
 " Ah, no ! That is what I remember a cripple, a 
 man of meagre parts " 
 
 She clapped her hand over his mouth caressingly. 
 
 " Hush, hush ! you shall not slander yourself in that 
 way. She ought to feel glad and honored to marry such 
 a man ; and some day, if she is half so sensible as you 
 think her, and is not in love with Mr. March, she would
 
 260 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 be if ah, John, isn't it dreadful ! You can't do it, and I 
 wouldn't have you. But it's hard. What could be 
 worse ! Let me help you bear it. I can't tell you 
 how I feel for you. But, oh, John, never, never yield ! " 
 
 " I ought to marry at once. The elders wish it. My 
 people would be glad. It is the one thing that would 
 put the wicked lure forever behind me." 
 
 " No, John ; don't you see that that would be shirking, 
 not to speak of the crime you would commit against the 
 poor woman whom you married, not only without loving 
 her, but loving another ! You have accepted the tempta 
 tion. You must bear all that it brings." 
 
 " I know it, Rose, I know it. I trust I do not seek to 
 shun any part of my duty. It is only when the horror of 
 the possibility sometimes it has seemed hideously pos 
 sible comes over me, that I think of such expedients." 
 
 " Do not dream of them ! It would be wrong to 
 yourself, a wrong, above all, to her generosity. The 
 worst of it is over now, and you will face it to the end." 
 
 "Nay, you had not thought that I would shuffle with 
 it ? " he asked, seriously, as his brow knitted in a man 
 ner rare with him. 
 
 " Surely you know my trust in you. How can you 
 think it ? It is not you I fear. It is she." 
 
 " In what way, dear ? " he asked, with an instant return 
 of his gentle manner. " I do not wish to vaunt my new 
 found strength, but I think you need not be troubled for 
 either of us. As long as she has faith in me, and with you 
 near me, dear, nothing can shake me. I feel that now," 
 he said, rising while she gave him his crutch. 
 
 The fire was burned low ; it was almost dark in the 
 room. They heard the watchman crying his midnight 
 couplet to the vacant street.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 261 
 
 " I shall have torture to suffer yet," he went on. " But 
 I shall be given endurance. To-night has yielded me 
 surety of that. A new peace comes over me. This is the 
 first Christmas we have spent together in a long time, 
 sister. Let us get all possible happiness out of it." He 
 limped to the door. " My megrims shan't harass this 
 little maid's brains so much again. Good-night," he 
 whispered, as he kissed her. 
 
 The sound of trumpets from the church-tower, greeting 
 the Christmas morning, leaped upon the still air. 
 
 " Ah, how dare any one be foreboding with that sound 
 in his ears ! " exclaimed Rose. 
 
 " Yes, dear, it bears a promise the Christmas promise. 
 But it is for us to fulfil it in our hearts. May God give 
 us strength ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 CONSTANCE told her aunt the whole story. If she 
 could have announced her engagement to Mr. March, 
 she would have stated that fact alone and left Mrs. 
 Echols's imagination to fill up the blanks. But as the 
 matter stood it was very far from easy to say in a few 
 words what she meant, or how the position in which she 
 found herself had become possible. Certainly the vocab 
 ulary of society did not furnish her with a phrase which 
 sufficiently declared her present relation to March. She 
 put it before her aunt as well as she could ; and this was 
 an effective way of placing her position lucidly before 
 herself. She began to feel how the importance to her of 
 Mr. Keator's action had deepened within the few hours 
 which had elapsed since March's proposal. 
 
 The cost of the failure of the minister supposing it 
 possible had been suddenly magnified. It was not only 
 its meaning for her. Another was involved now. She 
 found herself exaggerating, in the light of this percep 
 tion, her sense of the weakness of human nature in 
 opposition to her knowledge of Mr. Keator. But her 
 abiding trust in him consoled the rare moments in which 
 she found it possible to imagine ill of him. 
 
 It was after all her own duty toward him which really 
 troubled her. The impossible possibility of a lapse on 
 his part was a thing about which she might safely let her 
 fancy play. But she remembered that her compact with
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 263 
 
 Mr. Keator imposed its obligations upon her as well as 
 upon him, and this brought its immediate difficulties. It 
 was the evening of the day on which March had spoken, 
 and she had already told her story. Mrs. Echols, in a 
 dressing-sack, was seated before her mirror slowly draw 
 ing a comb through her thin hair. 
 
 " I was thinking of you," she said, as Constance 
 entered. 
 
 " I am glad of that," returned Constance, as she came 
 toward her. " I need some one to do a great deal of 
 thinking for me." She stood behind her aunt's chair and 
 looked musingly into the mirror over her head. " Let 
 me do that," she said, at length. 
 
 This was a service that she had often rendered Mrs. 
 Echols, and she worked silently for some time. The 
 task had a kind of fascination to her. She remembered as 
 a child climbing up and begging to be allowed to comb 
 her mother's hair. She began with long, even sweeps, 
 but her touch was less soft and certain than usual. 
 
 " Is it that I am tired after the theatricals, Constance, 
 or are you ? It's not as soothing to-night." 
 
 " No, aunt ? " asked her niece, quietly, and for a time 
 was more careful. 
 
 But she absently fell again into an irregular, unskilled 
 motion. 
 
 " What is it, dear ? " 
 
 With the womanly respect for half expressions, Con 
 stance did not affect to misunderstand. 
 
 " I've been thinking whether I am right in letting it go 
 on." 
 
 Mrs. Echols reflected a moment. 
 
 " Is it Mr. Keator ? " she asked. The girl continued 
 combing as she paused. " Is it because ? "
 
 264 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 She did not complete her thought. 
 
 " Yes, aunt. I would not fail in the slightest appear 
 ance toward him," exclaimed Constance, relying upon 
 her hearer's intelligence. " You see, the very fact that 
 the engagement was not entered into to be fulfilled, and 
 and all the circumstances make me feel that it ought 
 to be kept especially sacred." 
 
 " I didn't like to say it when you told me, but doesn't 
 it seem to you to have been a little ill-advised, shall we 
 say? " 
 
 Constance drew the comb quickly. 
 
 " As the world looks at such things, perhaps. But I 
 could not refuse him. My father's wish seemed to com 
 mand me, since it could not be carried out, to give him 
 at least this poor substitute. I can't explain it, but I did 
 it, and I hope I'm not base enough to be sorry for it." 
 
 " I was not thinking of your father's desire," said Mrs. 
 Echols, slowly, " and you must remember, I don't know 
 Mr. Keator. Things are often right with all the sur 
 roundings which appear doubtful at a little distance. I 
 only meant that I should not have counselled you to do 
 it." 
 
 Constance was silent for a moment. She could not 
 argue for her act. Sacrifice is, of course, unreasonable 
 and inexpedient, being more likely to help some one else 
 than one's self. That it is unjustifiable on practical 
 grounds, is a grievous defect if one must defend it by 
 logic. Constance perceived this, but she was not sorry 
 for it. Perhaps she felt that an act was not necessarily 
 the worse for shocking the laws of expediency. 
 
 But her reflections drew her back again to the thought 
 of her duty in the position which this act had brought 
 about.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 265 
 
 " Don't you think I had better go away ? " she asked, 
 faintly, at length. 
 
 " My dear girl ! " exclaimed her aunt, turning about. 
 " How could we spare you ? Send him ! " 
 
 "Remember his work. There is nothing to keep me 
 that is, nothing in that sense. Of course, it would 
 grieve me to leave you, but one's betrothal must always 
 change the conditions of one's life, I suppose. And I 
 couldn't help him any longer at Gerrit, you know." 
 
 Mrs. Echols leaned her elbow" upon the chair-back and 
 studied the girl's face. There was a wistful look upon it, 
 but the energy of her determination was also read 
 able. 
 
 " Perhaps you are right," she said, taking her hand and 
 stroking it. " You must do what you think best. Only 
 remember, you will leave us all mourning." 
 
 " It is you I take into account first. I don't see how I 
 can leave you." 
 
 " You won't find it easy to persuade him." 
 
 " I shan't consult him too much," declared she, with a 
 touch of her old pride. " It's not as if we were en 
 gaged." 
 
 But the love in her heart was deeper than the independ 
 ence of this expression may indicate, and she woke next 
 morning wondering what it was that made her so happy. 
 Her pulses bounded as she remembered why, and lying 
 there all alone she faintly blushed. She. rose and went 
 absently about the house. No one else was awake, and 
 she had that intense feeling of loneliness which the night 
 itself does not bring ; but for once it was a merry loneli 
 ness. She sang softly to herself as she opened the heavy 
 shutters and watched the light stream eagerly into the 
 rooms from which it had been barred.
 
 266 A VICl^ORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " It is going to be fair," she said to herself, looking 
 out at the sun brightening the dewy tree-tops and driv 
 ing the mountain mist before him. 
 
 For the first time in her experience she allowed herself 
 a superstition an extremely harmless one. 
 
 " It is a good omen," she whispered to herself. 
 
 She marvelled, as she walked the portico, at the new, 
 rare pleasure she found in everything that met her 
 eye. The liveliness of her observation, the agile move 
 ment of her fancy, were parts of an altogether foreign 
 delight. When had she seen so much before ? Then she 
 blushed as she had blushed when she awoke. When had 
 she felt so much before ? She wondered how it could 
 be that this feeling which was so rich, so precious, so 
 magical now that it came, could have lain so long unwel- 
 comed in her bosom. For it was not the birth of a 
 moment. She knew that. It had grown up through a 
 long time and made its home in her breast silently, with 
 out giving a hint. It was an absurd vexation that she 
 should not have known ; it seemed to impugn her under 
 standing of herself, she reflected, with a humorous 
 smile. 
 
 She went down into the garden and wandered among 
 the scrupulously-kept beds. The trees had almost lost 
 their foliage ; only the hardiest flowers remained. She 
 glanced affectionately at the peach tree which March had 
 climbed for her. It had scarcely a leaf, but the sunlight 
 was falling warmly on it and making diamonds out of the 
 heavy dew, which, in this climate, the October night had 
 not turned to frost. Her eyes roved about the garden, 
 whose trim parterres were so many reminders of the 
 dear garden in Judea. And this drew her thought to 
 her father. She wondered whether he would approve.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 267 
 
 She recalled his words with a gently reproachful 
 pain : 
 
 " Remember, that I thought of it; that is what I should 
 like to leave with you : that I thought of it." 
 
 These words had been a command to her. She could 
 not chide herself for remissness in attempting to accom 
 plish his desire. But it had not been possible, and now 
 was not this a becoming re-reading of his wish ? He 
 had liked Mr. March. Even without knowledge of 
 the great secret kindness he had done him, would he not 
 sanction this disposition of her life ? She was glad to 
 be able to think so. Without this faith in his approval 
 she felt that she could not have gone on. In the garden 
 she plucked a bunch of the late flowers with the autumn 
 pallor upon them and took them into the house. Within, 
 among a collection of articles brought from use at the 
 theatrical performance, her eye fell upon Mrs. Bartlett's 
 vase. She did not analyze the emotion which led her to 
 take it from its covering and put it upon the table, nor 
 inquire reasons for her gratitude to the mistake which 
 had brought it here ; and taking the flowers which she 
 had gathered, she decorated the vase for the table with 
 a thoughtful smile. 
 
 She did her usual little tasks about the house after 
 breakfast in a soft agitation of happiness. She had 
 never felt any sensation at all similar. Was it possible, 
 she asked herself, that she had surrendered so completely 
 as that? It both abashed and pleased her. As a young 
 girl one of her private words to herself had been that she 
 should never go so far in a matter like this as certain of 
 her acquaintance. She had always cherished her reserves, 
 and it alarmed her at the moment to think that any one 
 should be privileged to overcome them. It was at least
 
 268 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 possible, she reflected, to conceal the considerableness of 
 the conquest. Out of her hundred guns she would 
 give up sixty, say. That was sufficiently generous. 
 
 In feminine assemblages she had often heard it astutely 
 argued that women gave too much, and had listened to 
 condemnations of that form of unwisdom consisting in 
 allowing a man to know how dear a woman holds him. 
 It was, however, no part of this feminine logic, which 
 seemed to her to imply merely the retention of a path 
 for retreat that withheld her. She excused the sweet 
 disturbance that went on in her breast during the morn 
 ing by the reflection that this was the first occasion on 
 which she had been offered the sensation of awaiting a 
 lover's call. It is fair to say that she rejoiced with a 
 kind of recklessness in throwing open her heart to the 
 delicious tumult that assailed it. In its secure privacy 
 she devoted herself to him with the unreserve of a girl's 
 first passion. She simply shrank from admitting the 
 world to her secret, and especially from admitting him. 
 
 However, she met March when he came cantering up 
 to the door in the early afternoon, as she would have 
 wished to meet him which is saying much. When, after 
 a time, they issued from the grounds together on horse 
 back, they went galloping away into a realization of the 
 mythical Indian summer. It was, in fact, a nearly per 
 fect day a condescension of the Autumn, which obviously 
 had the right to be cold. The sun shone upon the 
 vivid green of the winter wheat. It fell also upon unnum 
 bered acres of corn stacked like battalions of toy soldiers 
 in rows, which recent wind-storms had toppled to the 
 South, giving them the appearance of being on their 
 march to that salubrious region. 
 
 March's attention to Constance's wants was almost
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 269 
 
 imaginative. He had, of course, always been careful of 
 them, but he enjoyed using his new rights and was per 
 petually sending his wits on excursions to find something 
 to do for her. It was true that many of the things which 
 he found to do were perfectly useless, but Constance 
 did not like them the less for that. On the whole, March 
 made quite as graceful a lover as it is given to the usual 
 man to be, and their common sense of humor rescued the 
 situation from that abyss of absurdity upon the verge 
 of which, in its least fortunate moments, it is apt to 
 hover. 
 
 " What an associative thing a perfume is ! " exclaimed 
 Constance, as they passed a field from which a peculiarly 
 sweet odor arose. " The odor of wild grape connects 
 me always with some of the pleasantest moments of my 
 life." 
 
 " I don't remember." 
 
 " No, that was before I met you. You mustn't think I 
 didn't sometimes have happy moments before that." 
 
 March laughed. 
 
 " You can't have had too many," he said, " unless they 
 are connected with another man." 
 
 She shook her head smilingly. 
 
 " There never was another." 
 
 " You forget Mr. Keator," returned March, half seri 
 ously. 
 
 " Oh," said Constance, " I am engaged to him." 
 
 She gave him a look of mocl$ coquetry, and a dancing 
 light shone in her eyes as he frowned faintly. She gave 
 a little laugh. 
 
 " Did you think you knew some one else to whom I 
 stand in the same relation," she asked, with her smile 
 dying wistfully in her eyes.
 
 270 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 He gave back her glance with a smile of measureless 
 love and indulgence. 
 
 Nothing to-day was without its poetry to them, and 
 their sharpened vision often saw it in the most unprom 
 ising objects. 
 
 Constance said she had always endowed trees with 
 character. Each represented a sort of personality to 
 her. The oak was the kindly father ; the elm, the lithe, 
 graceful daughter, and the maple, with its early foliage 
 and swift, bloody dismantling, the prodigal son. She 
 asked him to observe how the pines were constantly lift 
 ing their eyes and shrugging their shoulders. 
 
 " ' Oh, I don't know,' they seem to say," she declared. 
 
 March found the perfect familiarity of their intercourse 
 the most delightful thing he had ever known. He had 
 been curious about the workings of this rare mind from 
 their first meeting, and if he compared what he knew to 
 what he did not know, he could not count himself much 
 acquainted with it. Now it was seemingly wide open to 
 him, and he wandered with a kind of rapture through 
 its spacious, richly-furnished apartments. If it had 
 depended upon him the ride would never have come to 
 an end, but Constance, who we know had schooled her 
 self, gently suggested that they turn, and they were 
 presently galloping homeward. 
 
 " I must tell you," she said, without preface, as the 
 horses went at a walk up a hill, " that I am going away." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I am going to New York to pay a visit to my aunt." 
 
 " Not now?" 
 
 " Presently." 
 
 " You can't imagine how hard that is on me," he said, 
 quietly.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 271 
 
 " I'm not bound to flatter myself in that way, am I ? " 
 returned she, with a smile that charmed him, despite the 
 agitation of his thoughts. 
 
 " You are not bound to flatter me by considering my 
 feelings at all," he said, gently, " but I hope you will." 
 
 " Surely. There are other considerations, however." 
 
 Her face was a little troubled. 
 
 " My dear girl, pray don't let me interfere with them. 
 You know I believe in you always, whatever you do. I'm 
 sure you have the best reasons." 
 
 " Yes, I think I have," answered Constance, thought 
 fully. 
 
 " I shan't ask what they are." 
 
 " If you won't, please. They are excellent, as you say, 
 but if you will trust me I won't repeat them. I can tell 
 you though, that I have wanted to see New York again 
 ever since I teft it. Aunt Cynthia asked me to come 
 when we left Judea together, and I have never ceased to 
 include it among my plans." 
 
 " You can't go at some other time ? You've no idea 
 how precious these first days are to me." 
 
 " Ah, yes, I have ! You must remember that I have a 
 little measure of my own," she exclaimed, impulsively. 
 " But I shan't go for a fortnight yet," she added. 
 
 She gave him a look in which she allowed him to read 
 something of her love, and her great pain in troubling 
 him. 
 
 They had reached the summit of the hill, and March 
 gave his horse a thoughtful cut with his whip. They 
 galloped on for a few moments in silence, and then as the 
 animals fell into a walk again at the foot of another hill, 
 
 " Constance, dear," said March, abruptly, " it's not 
 Mr. Keator, is it ? " 
 18
 
 272 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT, 
 
 It came with overwhelming suddenness, and she was 
 not able to restrain her quick blush, nor make the defence 
 she had arranged. 
 
 " How Mr. Keator ?" she asked, weakly. 
 
 " I mean you are not going from any fancied duty ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you call fancied duty," returned 
 she, difficultly. After a pause, she added, with a helpless 
 gesture, " I'm going because I think I ought." 
 
 " Then you are obeying an obligation of conscience, 
 and it is to Mr. Keator, since there is no one else. I 
 don't ask you not to do it. You probably know best. 
 But 1 entreat you to think well of it." 
 
 " Oh, I assure you I did not want to do it. They are 
 all so kind to me." 
 
 She hesitated. For the hundredth time that day she 
 was struck by the incongruity, the anomalousness of their 
 situation. She wished to go on and add that it was a 
 grievous thing to her to be obliged to go away from him, 
 but she could not frame the statement in any language 
 that seemed becoming. She could not have said all that 
 was in her heart if they had been formally betrothed ; 
 but in the present singular posture of the affair she was 
 unable to give her feeling even so much form as she felt 
 she owed him. 
 
 "I am very sorry," she said, and endeavored to make 
 her tone say all that she wished to put into words. 
 
 March caught the uncertain pleading in her voice, and, 
 suddenly halting his horse, said, as she also paused and 
 turned somewhat wonderingly to face him, 
 
 " Darling, you must not go. I don't know that I have 
 any rights worth mentioning, but I mean to use all I have. 
 I yielded at first because I thought it was your wish. But 
 I see that you are only surrendering to a sense of duty.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 273 
 
 It may be necessary I am willing to trust your sense of 
 that but if either of us is to assume the obligation it 
 must be I." 
 
 Constance eyed him for a moment in surprise. It was 
 rather a wonder that she found her thought consenting 
 so readily to his, than that he should take this tone of 
 authority, which affected her. It was not so strange that 
 he should command as that she should unconsciously, 
 almost impassively, obey. 
 
 " You mean that you will go away ? " she asked, at 
 last. 
 
 " Certainly. You don't think that when it is simply a 
 question of separation I can allow you to make the move. 
 It is my duty, my privilege to go." 
 
 " But your work at Gerrit ? " 
 
 " Lincoln can take charge of that. Was it that you 
 were considering ? Be careful ; I shall begin to believe 
 you really care for me." 
 
 Constance blushed. 
 
 " You know I was interested before " 
 
 " Would it have occurred to you then to go away to 
 keep me there ? No, let us leave it the other way. The 
 effect upon my conceit is most mischievous, but let us 
 take the risk." 
 
 " Oh, if you insist ! " yielded she, with a little laugh. 
 
 " Insist is an ugly word. I go away to return when I 
 have your permission. That is all. Only make the time 
 as short as possible." 
 
 " I gave my promise to Mr. Keator in May," mused 
 Constance. " A year from that ! It will be a long 
 time." 
 
 " Do you mean to keep me away until then ? " 
 
 " Do you think I wish it ? But it's due due Mr. Kea-
 
 274 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 tor and myself. You may say I owe something to you. 
 I'm willing to acknowledge that debt afterward." 
 
 " It will be a miserable time for me. I don't pretend to 
 deny that. But if I may claim you at last I could wait 
 twice as long. I shall have that to sustain me. Poor 
 Keator ! He has not even that consolation." 
 
 " Where shall you go ?" asked Constance, solicitously. 
 
 He gave her an inquiring glance. 
 
 " Home shall I not ? You are giving me time. I 
 shall need some one to talk with about you, and I want 
 to make you familiar to my mother before I bring you to 
 her." 
 
 Constance's cheek was swiftly dyed again. She 
 glanced down. 
 
 " You are looking a long way ahead." 
 
 " That is all I shall have to console me. You wouldn't 
 have me look at the present ? " 
 
 " Don't see too much in the future." 
 
 " That won't be easy. You must remember that I see 
 you in the midst of it." 
 
 Lincoln accompanied March to New York and saw 
 him sail. In his law office he had fortunately not yet 
 done so much business as to make its temporary aban 
 donment costly ; and when he had made certain arrange 
 ments regarding its disposition, he returned to Gerrit. 
 
 Constance did not attempt to conceal from herself the 
 poignant sense of loss and absence which she felt after 
 March's departure, and in the midst of this she found 
 Lincoln's frequent and cheering presence a kind of bene 
 faction. In his calls they talked chiefly of Gerrit (of 
 which Constance deemed it a duty to secure the most full 
 and accurate reports), and very frankly of March. When 
 she allowed herself to dwell on this foremost figure in her
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 275 
 
 thoughts, she was often guilty of wishing that she had not 
 sent him away only, however, to make cordial repent 
 ance immediately. It was usually a pure satisfaction to 
 her that she had been able to do such complete justice to 
 her pledge, and it was with a singularly clear conscience 
 that she set out with her aunt one day early in the new 
 year for Judea.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 CONSTANCE turned the great key in the door of her 
 old home with a melancholy pleasure. But when she 
 had entered she went quickly from room to room. It 
 was all the same. All her dumb friends among the fur 
 niture and pictures were waiting faithfully for her. Not 
 a chair had been moved, not a painting changed. She 
 had feared that the man in charge or certainly his 
 notable wife would have altered and re-arranged in the 
 German strife for neatness. But the dust had gathered 
 and the cobwebs had been spun, it seemed, without 
 interference. At this sight the inborn house-wife rose 
 superior to the sentiment in her, and the permanence of 
 everything was no longer sweet. It was the stability of 
 the grave which weeds obliterate, she felt, as she went 
 swiftly to the nearest window. She opened it and 
 waited impatiently for the air and light to make them 
 selves a home again in the musty rooms. 
 
 " Yes, aunt," she begged, as Mrs. Echols glanced 
 doubtfully at her, " open them, please ! Open all you 
 can ! I feel as if the old house were reproaching me 
 for having abandoned it so long." 
 
 She sped down stairs and returned with a broom and 
 a duster. The latter she gave her aunt, and retaining 
 the first herself, assaulted the cobwebs with a kind of 
 tender vigor. The two had not laid aside their bonnets
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 277 
 
 and mantles, and to the ignorant eye of a spectator their 
 movements might not have looked wholly reasonable. 
 To Mr. Keator, however, who came limping into the 
 parlor when the war some moments later reached that 
 region, they were quite intelligible. But the frequent 
 sight of his sister engaged in this species of temporary 
 belligerency, though it had accustomed, had not inured 
 him to the stirring spectacle, and it seemed to him he 
 would do as well to return at a more auspicious season. 
 He was turning away from the door, with this thought, 
 when Constance caught sight of him, and, dropping her 
 broom, came swiftly to him with both hands outstretched 
 and her illuminating smile upon her lips. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Keator ! " she exclaimed, joyously, as he 
 took his hand from his crutch to be free to receive her 
 double clasp, " I'm so glad ! I hoped you would see us 
 and come up at once." 
 
 She led him to a sofa draped in its fatigue costume of 
 brown holland, introducing her aunt on the way. 
 
 " Surely you weren't going to let our broom and 
 duster drive you off ? We were only trying to make 
 it seem more homelike, and that is unnecessary since 
 you have come." 
 
 She pointed her pretty flattery with a kindly smile, 
 and she did not see the look of happiness that possessed 
 the minister's face as she went on. 
 
 " How can I say how glad I am to see you again, Mr. 
 Keator ? I've been trying to make it all seem natural 
 here at home. It seems perfectly natural now." 
 
 She began to ask him many questions. How was the 
 garden looking ? She had not yet been out to see. 
 And the oleander was it still alive ? Did the Sieckel 
 pear tree yield as abundantly as usual ? Who owned
 
 278 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 her father's old horse " Fancy " now ? Had the man 
 who bought her kept her, and had he treated her well ? 
 Benicia was she still with him ? Was Sister Zelda as 
 briskly as usual ? Constance found time between her 
 rapid questions to wonder that so many interests re 
 mained to her in Judea. 
 
 Mr. Keator sat fingering his crutch, answering as well 
 as he might, and gazing absorbedly at her unconscious 
 face. 
 
 " And your sister ? " asked Constance, suddenly. 
 " Some one tells me that you have been importing a 
 sister, Mr. Keator. Where have you kept her hidden ? 
 You never said anything about her." 
 
 " She was so far away and I did not expect her soon 
 then." 
 
 " It must be a great pleasure to have her with you. 
 Please tell her how glad we shall be to know her. 
 What is her name ? " 
 
 " Rose," answered Mr. Keator, abstractedly, keeping 
 his impotent eyes on her face. 
 
 " Rose Rose Keator. What a pretty name ! " 
 
 " She will be very happy to call," said the minister, 
 formally. 
 
 Constance paused abruptly and regarded him in 
 thoughtful absence. His glance was turned toward Mrs. 
 Echols, whom he began to ask some perfunctory ques 
 tions. She was not thinking as she looked at him of his 
 unfailing courtesy, of which this polite inquiry was one 
 of the examples. She had suddenly come to the end 
 of her queries, and she was conscious that she had 
 prosecuted them rather as a means of defence than for 
 the satisfaction of her curiosity. She asked herself 
 what she had found it necessary to defend herself against,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 279 
 
 and the instant answer caused her to accuse her imagi 
 nation for its failure to warn her. She had given no 
 thought to this meeting with Mr. Keator, and she felt 
 that her manner wore rather obviously the air of having 
 been manufactured to meet an exigency. Those who 
 have made her acquaintance will understand that this 
 was of all things disturbing to her. 
 
 " You have come back to see about the hospital ? " 
 asked Mr. Keator, turning again to her, " or have you 
 been better advised ? You know Miss Van Cleef's 
 plan," he added to Mrs. Echols. " It was my endeavor 
 to discourage her when she proposed it. It seemed like 
 doing too much." 
 
 " She does it for her father. You must remember 
 that. In that way you won't think she can do too much," 
 Mrs. Echols returned, with her courteous smile. 
 
 " But it comes to the Church " 
 
 " The Church may blush as a matter of form, said 
 Constance, ''but you must take it. There is no ques 
 tion there need not be ; need there, Mr. Keator ? " 
 
 " We can't prevent your gift, I suppose, if you are 
 determined," he said, with a smile ; " and, I think, I can 
 make the elders see yes, I may promise their assent, I 
 believe." 
 
 Mr. Keator had not made Constance's proposition 
 known, and in his inmost heart he was aware that some 
 difficulty might be made about her standing in the 
 Church. He took the burden cheerfully on his shoulders, 
 and he did not permit them to suppose that it existed. 
 
 They talked for a long time of the hospital, especially 
 canvassing the proper site, and when he rose to go, 
 Constance said, 
 
 " I shall have to leave it all to you, Mr. Keator. It is
 
 280 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 pleasant to take up the old custom of relying on your gen 
 erosity." 
 
 She gave him a look which she meant to express all 
 the kindness and sympathy for him that was in her heart. 
 She had always greatly liked him, and in this renewal 
 of their intercourse she liked him more than ever. How 
 much this feeling may have had to do with compassion 
 for a situation whose peculiar misery, until she saw him, 
 she seemed never to have fairly felt, need not be ven 
 tured. It is certain that she found herself often during 
 their talk picturing the months that he had passed since 
 her departure. If the passion whose strength she could 
 not doubt had not yielded to his severe resolution, what 
 months they must have been ! Her fancy furnished her 
 with no adequate idea of them, she was sure, but the 
 sense of this only made them the more pitiful. All this 
 she tried to make her expressive face say in bidding him 
 good-morning. She may have trusted too much to the 
 fineness of Mr. Keator's perceptions. This was what 
 she thought when she saw the answering look on his 
 face. 
 
 The truth was she had taken too little into account 
 the weak, man nature which no vows or obligations can 
 quite overthrow. In his glance she read with terrifying 
 clearness the history of the few months she had tried to 
 imagine all the resistless love and longing, the unbend 
 ing will to conquer and the loathing of the carnal nature 
 that would not down. She wondered why she had not 
 seen before in the haggard lines of his face what it had 
 cost him. It was a look that would have frightened one 
 less discriminating. Constance was only sympathetically 
 appalled at the retrospect. For the future she saw, or 
 thought she saw, in his look the assurance of ultimate
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 281 
 
 victory. She was shaken by the passion that glowed 
 upon her from his eyes ; but she thought of the integrity 
 behind it an integrity which in all her acquaintance 
 with him had never failed for more than the instant in 
 the garden, and felt calmly secure.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MR. KEATOR left the house and walked toward his 
 home with a bitter consciousness teasing his faithful 
 intention. The serene heights to which he fondly 
 fancied he had climbed seemed sinking under him. The 
 quiet strength which he had trusted that he had gained 
 through Rose's presence and his assiduous self-abase 
 ment was the infant's strength when the need came to 
 face her. He had a despondent perception that he had 
 been building a house of cards which was weakly set 
 tling about him. As he saw this emotion of the moment 
 begin to set crumbling all his long-erecting, wearily- 
 builded structures, he felt wretched and ashamed. It 
 seemed cruel, and for an instant he found frowardness 
 to question the Providence which had sent her again into 
 his path. In his quick repentance he saw what seemed 
 to him a clear design to make his trial more searching, 
 and he said to himself, as he silently besought strength 
 to bear it, that he deserved all and more. 
 
 " You have seen her ! " exclaimed Rose, as she helped 
 him off with his coat in the hallway of the parsonage. 
 
 She sought anxiously in her brother's face for the 
 signs of her fear, and believed that she found them. 
 
 ' It has troubled you," she said, with swift deduction. 
 " Oh, it is too bad that she should come back to make 
 you miserable again." 
 
 Mr. Keator forced a smile.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 283 
 
 " Do I look miserable ? No, Rose," he told her, as he 
 stroked her cheek, " she is come upon a better mission 
 than that. She is to build us a new hospital, you 
 know." 
 
 " But if she tears down all your buildings in the 
 process ? " lamented the girl with unconscious repetition 
 of his metaphor. 
 
 Mr. Keator shrank at this arraignment of his inward 
 fear, but he said, summoning a smile again, with effort, 
 
 " We shall have to put an extra prop or two under the 
 walls that is all. We shall get along, I think. I shall 
 be more tempted yes. But I wish to be tempted, you 
 know." 
 
 " How can I ever doubt you ? " said Rose, as they 
 went into the library together. " It is not really a doubt. 
 All my knowledge of you teaches me so much better ! " 
 
 Mr. Keator seated himself rather wearily, and she 
 sank beside him on her accustomed hassock. 
 
 " Remember that it is always my love that forms it," 
 she went on. " Sometimes it must seem strange to you, 
 John." 
 
 " Do you think I never doubt myself ? " 
 
 " Ah, that is your great weakness your modesty. 
 There's nothing you mightn't do if you believed more in 
 yourself." 
 
 The minister sighed. 
 
 " Nay, say rather that there is nothing I might not do 
 if I believed more in the saving force of my highest self 
 the self that was in Christ." 
 
 Rose went to call on Constance the following day. 
 The holland cerements had been lifted from the furni 
 ture, and the ladies had spent the morning in finding a 
 servant, Mrs. Echols being still out upon that mission.
 
 284 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 The discussion of that privileged class, which among 
 women makes such a fortunate stop-gap topic of con 
 versation as men find in politics, found for the two 
 a ready road to good acquaintance. Rose told of her 
 own trials with Benicia in her vivacious fashion. As 
 she sat in her Moravian costume upon the sofa talking 
 gayly, she reminded Constance of a French painting she 
 had once seen. This represented a frolicsome peasant 
 girl who had dressed herself as a nun and was secretly 
 exhibiting her profane masquerade to a sympathetic 
 group. Not that the cap and kerchief and gown of gray 
 seemed discordant with the fair figure before her ; on 
 the contrary, there was both a mysterious propriety in 
 her dress and a justifying naturalness in such a manner 
 as an accompaniment of it. 
 
 Constance did not understand it. She recalled her 
 old feeling about herself : that her costume and her 
 bearing refuted each other. Yet Rose, who certainly had 
 not what the superficial observer would have thought 
 the Moravian air, seemed in some way to have succeeded 
 in making her dress and her manner very good friends. 
 Constance wanted to tell her that she was fortunate. 
 
 Rose had not at all come to exhibit herself, and she 
 might have been modestly troubled by Constance's spec 
 ulations if she had been made acquainted with them. 
 She had called chiefly because she believed that Mr. 
 Keator wished it, and also, it must be owned, from an 
 impulse of curiosity to know the girl who had brought 
 such havoc into her brother's quiet life. 
 
 Rose, being a woman, was nothing if not partisan, and 
 all her charity had not availed to bring her into a favor 
 able mood for this meeting. She could not help thinking 
 Constance to blame in refusing her love to her brother ;
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 285 
 
 and then in making the happiness, which might, never 
 theless, have come to both of them, impossible, by her 
 deafness to the warning that would have prevented the 
 rebuke in the church. It was, therefore, with a species 
 of resentful curiosity that she came to take a look at 
 Constance. 
 
 She meant merely to take a look and depart ; but 
 Constance's warm greeting, her frank readiness to like 
 her for her brother's sake, her alluring manner won upon 
 her. She could not resist the amiable thirst to be liked, 
 which Constance's face expressed at the moment, and 
 expressed so rarely. Rose found herself flattered out of 
 her umbrage, and at length saw herself repentantly 
 endeavoring to do away with the impression she fancied 
 her first reserve might have created. They talked of 
 many matters, all of which seemed to have some subtle 
 relation to Mr. Keator ; for Rose had the sense of his 
 centrality in the revolution of things which we find so 
 pretty in a young wife touching her husband. 
 
 At last they came to speak directly of this subject of 
 her eloquence, and Rose tried, without the malice which 
 must have tinged the effort a few moments before, to 
 give her hearer a sense of his nobility. She could not 
 resist the glad feeling of gratification which stole over 
 her as Constance joined in this celebration of her 
 brother's virtues. It overthrew and put to shame all her 
 secret theories, but in her pleasure she did not mind 
 that. She said with natveti that she could not imagine 
 anyone failing to love him. Constance assented quickly, 
 and added that other men were like the mediocre paint 
 ings, touching which there might be a thousand differ 
 ences, but that Mr. Keator was like a master's picture, 
 about which no one could hesitate.
 
 286 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 Then at length Rose understood. With a pang for 
 which she found no excuse, she reached the entire 
 comprehension she had refused to gain from her 
 brother's modesty. She admired him that was it 
 admired him distantly as she would a work of art ; her 
 liking for him was for the pleasure which he gave her, 
 not for the pleasure which she might give him. That 
 was the essence of love ; and Rose perceived with a 
 clearness against which there was nothing to urge, that 
 there was not a particle of that sentiment for him in her 
 breast. She evidently esteemed him too much to love 
 him. It seemed to Rose that she ought to be glad of 
 this, and at least she relieved Constance of all reproach. 
 This girl, to whom she had come without amiability, 
 understood him ; of that she was confident. And what 
 could be more satisfying ? It was perhaps because she 
 had clung, until the moment, with the persistence of 
 romance, to the hope that in spite of seeming obstacles 
 all might yet work together for their happiness with 
 each other, that she felt a twinge of reluctance in letting 
 go her hold of the possibility.. But she went home with 
 a lighter heart than she had carried to the old house, and 
 she took an early opportunity to make one or two admis 
 sions to her brother. 
 
 No one knew even Rose, with all her sympathies 
 stretched toward his trouble, did not guess the rending 
 pain that tortured every moment of Mr. Keator's waking 
 hours after Constance's coming and haunted his dreams. 
 He did not fall to pitying himself ; he did not blame 
 circumstances. But he grew to hate the infirmity which 
 would not suffer him to rest. 
 
 A man of less severe training and less rigorous habits 
 of thought might have been able to shift the respon-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 287 
 
 sibility for his condition, and to find consolation in the 
 belief that the current into which he had chanced to 
 drop, the direction of fate, the accidents outside his 
 power accidents which had drawn him into relation 
 with Constance, and without his will, had brought about 
 and left upon his hands his present intolerable position 
 were irresistible agents, nullifying his personal force. 
 But nothing was more accurate than Mr. Keator's con 
 science. He could not have cajoled it if he had wished 
 to, and these poor sophistries were as impossible to him 
 as a deliberate falsity. 
 
 It had been his life business to seek out and publish 
 the ways of sin, to warn against Satan's devices and to 
 brand them relentlessly. It was not now the time, since 
 he had become the sinner, to blind his lucid vision. He 
 did not shrink from characterizing his wrong ; indeed, 
 he found a melancholy pleasure in excoriating himself. 
 
 The clear sight which showed him the sin showed as 
 pitilessly its penalty, and his conscience crucified him 
 daily in agonies of which no words can give adequate 
 sense. Her potent presence had melted his firm resolves 
 and swept away all that he had gained before a week had 
 passed. The innumerable plans and preparations for 
 the hospital, and when it was begun, the consultations 
 that inevitably went on between them, kept them in the 
 most intimate association. 
 
 He was forced to sit or walk beside her for many hours 
 each day, and to talk of architecture or of indifferent 
 matters while one thought burned momently for utter 
 ance. At times, in the rapture of his love, it seemed to 
 him that he must take her in his arms ; as he sat with 
 her, the temptation to snatch the slim, fair hand that lay 
 outlined against her dark gown, almost within his touch, 
 '9
 
 288 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 was scarcely resistible. He had only to say the few 
 fatal words and she was his ; and they hung so insist 
 ently on his tongue that often they had almost said them 
 selves. 
 
 It is not strange that he grew half reckless. He 
 looked into her intoxicating face, and all obligations 
 that kept him from her grew insignificant. Yet for any 
 reason or no reason, he had always the saving feeling of 
 the impossibility of final failure ; while out of the sense 
 of present weakness one thing always stood his integ 
 rity. It had never been questioned ; until the fatal hour 
 when his trial had begun in the arbor in the garden, it 
 had sternly never been allowed to fail. Save for that 
 momentary weakness it was intact, and was it not still 
 his ? It presented itself as something worth living and 
 struggling for, even if he could forget the abundant 
 spiritual rewards to which his conflict looked. He con 
 stantly pricked himself with the recollection of what it 
 would cost him to lose the consciousness of that. Re 
 luctance to forfeit his self-respect was indeed lower 
 than the highest motive he could have wished to guide 
 him ; but when the moon is not out one may be glad 
 to walk by the light of the stars. 
 
 The consolations of his faith were still his, but the 
 grievous sin which he felt himself to be daily committing 
 often so weighed upon him that he was ashamed to use 
 them. How could he ask forgiveness for a fault of which, 
 fortify himself as he might, he was certain he must again 
 be guilty the following day ? In the church he offered up 
 the usual prayers. Some of them seemed framed for his 
 trouble ; and an observant ear might have detected his 
 wishful stress upon the words of the Pater Noster 
 " lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ANOTHER man might have taken the coward's refuge 
 in retreat. But for every reason that was impossible to 
 Mr. Keator. If he could have brought himself to such 
 poltroonery, he could hardly have left his work. Vaca 
 tions were not frequent among the Moravian ministers, 
 and he had recently been granted such a respite. But 
 the consideration which held him back, when occasionally 
 in desperation he sought any way out of this form of 
 daily torture, was his sense of what he owed to Con 
 stance's generosity. She had given him this period of 
 probation, and at whatever cost of pain to himself he 
 must refuse to cheat it of its efficacy. His final conquest 
 would by so much the more have attained the object for 
 which she had munificently given her promise. But the 
 struggle was bitter ! He had supposed himself tried 
 before, and, alas ! had fancied himself almost conqueror. 
 By comparison, while she was still securely remote, his 
 burden had scarcely deserved the name. In these days 
 of acute suffering, to hear her name spoken was to be 
 shamed by the pursuing wish ; to pass her dwelling, as 
 he was obliged to do many times daily, was to be mad 
 dened by remembrance of the ease with which he might 
 gain the happiness for which every fibre of his torn 
 spirit longed. 
 
 His personal difficulties did not cause him to falter in 
 his Church work. On the contrary, he plunged more fer 
 vently into every task which he could pretend an obliga-
 
 290 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 tion to undertake. The irresistible craving to busy his 
 brain about concerns quite removed from his own pressed 
 upon him ; he felt sometimes as if he must flee from his 
 thoughts, and on these occasions often pained Rose by 
 his rashness. 
 
 The genuine Winter was with them now. In the street 
 a single deep rut served for a road, and before the houses 
 the snow was monstrously massed by the brethren's con 
 scientious shovels. Within, the frost tapestries shadowed 
 the window-panes, and the huge logs that painted fanta 
 sies in rose-color on them in the twilight, again made the 
 hearth the central point in the brethren's homes. It was 
 in weather like this that Rose found it needful to beg her 
 brother not to attempt the drive to Little Slab Hollow. 
 This was a village fifteen miles from Judea, where a man 
 who had formerly been one of his flock lay seriously ill. 
 He had left Judea three years before on the world's 
 business, as the brethren called it. It had, at all events, 
 not been Moravian business, and his name had been sor 
 rowfully erased from their books. Now, in his failure 
 and distress, Mr. Keator knew that he would not venture 
 to send for him. When, therefore, word came to him 
 of his illness, he did not hesitate before the opportunity 
 which he saw to rescue a soul. It is true that when he was 
 secure against Rose's importunities, slipping quickly out 
 of Judea in a sleigh, he owned to himself, grieving, that his 
 motive had not been a perfectly single one. It was 
 impossible to deny that he was glad to escape from the 
 brooding reflections which this evening had cost him 
 more than the ordinary pain. 
 
 Constance, who had intimated at her arrival that her 
 stay would be brief, had now determined to remain a week 
 longer than she had intended, that she might at least see
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 291 
 
 the hospital outlined. The ground when she came had 
 been less firmly frozen than is usual in early January, 
 and the work had been begun. The recent snow had 
 given pause to the building, however, and the young 
 foundations were buried where only the January thaw 
 could search them out. It was for this somewhat mythi 
 cal occurrence that Constance had decided to wait, and 
 her decision was giving Mr. Keator a kind of sweet 
 anguish. 
 
 He was glad that she was to stay longer. How should 
 he not be ? The future after her departure was a black 
 void in his account. He hesitated to look into it, and it 
 was hard to imagine himself bearing it. But it was not 
 toward this that his quick fear went out when she told 
 him of her intention. He at once said to himself that 
 he would willingly face the result if she would but go 
 away immediately, without an hour's delay. 
 
 As his mind leaped forward in imagination to this 
 added week, he was for the first time fearful of himself. 
 He began to doubt ever so faintly his ultimate triumph. 
 He had been sorely tempted. He had long felt himself 
 to be at the edge of a precipice, he had known that he 
 was in danger ; at times, perhaps, he had been nearer 
 yielding than he knew. But unconsciously, obscurely, 
 from what source he knew not, he had been buoyed by 
 the faith that utter failure was impossible. In her pres 
 ence it had seemed to him, as each moment succeeded 
 the last, that he must surely fail, and yet each moment 
 passed and the next found him as before. 
 
 It is not easy to say how it was it may have been due 
 to the blameless life behind that would not be so belied, 
 or perhaps merely to his obstinate hope but, through it 
 all, something had given him intangible assurance that,
 
 2g 2 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 tempted as he might be, such unthinkable ruin could not 
 befall him, such an annulling of all his work, such a 
 denial of the faith by which he had lived, Heaven would 
 not permit to overtake him. But as he looked forward 
 to another such week of close association as those bit 
 terly sweet weeks just past, his confidence was shaken ; 
 he reckoned with his remaining strength, and feared 
 for it. 
 
 With these thoughts burdening his mind, it was a 
 blessed relief to feel the motion of the sleigh under him, 
 to take the keen air beating against his cheeks, even to 
 find an occupation in being thoroughly cold. 
 
 The man at Little Slab Hollow was very low with fever, 
 but his heavy eyes had still the intelligence of his shame 
 as Mr. Keator bent over him. 
 
 " You were pardoned long ago, Dinkel," said the min 
 ister, taking his hand before he could begin to excuse 
 himself. " We never cherished any ill will against you. 
 We were only grieved that you were led to do it." 
 
 " Led ! " exclaimed the man, hoarsely, willing to accept 
 the charitable construction. " That is a kind word led. 
 But it's the truth. I wouldn't have gone for to do it 
 myself. It was a man I met in the world," he groaned. 
 " I suppose I was a good subject. I was sort of restless, 
 and he put the devil's thoughts into me. It wasn't easy 
 to do. I was fond of the Church. And so I didn't go 
 far only down to Maryland. I thought maybe I might 
 want to comeback some day, and it's turned out so." 
 
 " Well, well, Dinkel, that is all settled now," said Mr. 
 Keator, soothingly, for the man had somehow got upon 
 his elbow in his excitement. " Don't agitate yourself. I 
 want to talk to you about other things." 
 
 With his thoughts constantly elsewhere, command
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 293 
 
 them as he might, Mr. Keator endeavored to prepare 
 this errant soul for death. At last the man fell asleep 
 with a peaceful smile upon his lips. The minister sat 
 watching him. Once or twice the landlady of the inn, 
 at which, working his way back to Judea, the traveller 
 had fallen ill, came in to look at him and to ask if there 
 was anything she could do. 
 
 Dinkel woke at length uneasily and asked for water. 
 Mr. Keator brought it. As the dying man looked into 
 his eyes " Is it all the same up at the settlement ? 
 Would I know it ? " he asked, pitifully. 
 
 " All the same. Nothing is changed." But after a 
 moment, with a pang of recollection of his own, he added : 
 " A hospital is being built near the Sisters' Choir-house. 
 You remember where it stands ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't forget ! " he moaned. Then, with the 
 irrelevance of his wandering thoughts : " Are you sure 
 they forgive me ? " he asked. 
 
 Mr. Keator made the required confirmation, and the 
 man relapsed into a vacant silence, keeping his eyes on 
 the unceiled rafters above his head. 
 
 " Where is the society getting the money ? " he asked, 
 musingly, after a long pause, without turning his face. 
 
 " For what ? " 
 
 " Hospital," he answered, briefly. 
 
 Mr. Keator struggled with the simple words. 
 
 " From Miss Van Cleef," replied he, after a moment. 
 
 " The doctor's daughter she that went South ? " 
 
 " The same," assented Mr. Keator, laconically. 
 
 His thoughts had reverted to Constance. It was 
 several minutes before Dinkel interrupted them. 
 
 " Yes, I went South myself," he murmured, beginning 
 to wander a little ; . . . " saw her there."
 
 294 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 In his absorption it had not occurred to Mr. Keator 
 to wonder how Dinkel knew of Constance's departure 
 from Judea. He asked his question of him now, impul 
 sively. 
 
 " At Quinnimont ? " 
 
 " Gerrit." 
 
 Mr. Keator said to himself that he did not know she 
 had travelled in the South. He permitted himself to 
 inquire the whereabouts of Gerrit. 
 
 " March," said Dinkel, with effort. " Mr. March 
 you know him ? " 
 
 Mr. Keator wound his fingers about his crutch. Con 
 stance, with no active wish to keep the intelligence from 
 him, yet with a kind of shrinking from telling it, had 
 not informed him of March's return, and, of course, had 
 found no reason to give him other facts concerning her 
 English lover. She was acquitting herself of all possible 
 obligation to her duty in the matter. It was character 
 istic that she should feel a right to her reserve. But the 
 news would have been more agreeable from her. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Mr. Keator, " where was he ? " 
 
 He might have spared himself the trouble of hiding 
 his intense interest, for Dinkel saw nothing. 
 
 " Gerrit his place colony," he answered, confusedly. 
 
 Mr. Keator remembered March's project of a colony 
 very well. They had often talked it over together. At 
 the neighborhood of this colony to Constance's residence 
 he tried not to wonder. He said to himself that it was 
 a mere chance ; such things were always happening. 
 But he did not ask less eagerly, 
 
 " And and Miss Van Cleef ? Was she there ? " 
 
 The man turned toward him, faintly roused by his 
 eagerness.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 295 
 
 " Yes," he said, reasonably. " She used to come over 
 from Quinnimont." 
 
 " She she was interested in the colony ? " asked Mr. 
 Keator. 
 
 The man smiled faintly in spite of his failing strength. 
 Mr. Keator thought it a devil's smile. 
 
 " Mr. March . . . interested her," answered Dinkel, 
 difficultly, but in a tone of suggestion for which the min 
 ister, in his sudden passion, could have choked him. 
 
 " How dare you ? " cried Mr. Keator, rising, in out 
 rage. 
 
 " Every one knew." gasped the man, feebly. 
 
 Mr. Keator hobbled quickly to the window and looked 
 out in nervous, helpless wrath. The sun made itself 
 vaguely known upon the gray horizon, and he counted 
 the chickens in the tree on which the casement looked, 
 in his angry agitation. The cock began to bestir him 
 self drowsily and set up his crow, while the minister's 
 thoughts went in desperate iteration over this intelli 
 gence. A thousand fancies beset him ; he tried hard to 
 reason it out to Constance's credit, to something which 
 need not torture him with its mere suggestion. He 
 could not suffer himself to believe what the man's words 
 seemed to say. He clung with the tenacity of despair 
 to all that he knew of Constance ; he asked himself what 
 he knew of her that was not admirable, and would not 
 admit the ghastly suggestion born of his own experience : 
 she doubtless trusted his uprightness as implicitly still 
 as he had always trusted hers ; and what wickedness 
 was not even now knocking at his breast ? 
 
 He turned wearily from the window. It suddenly 
 seemed to him gross to accept this man's wandering 
 words against all his knowledge of her. It discredited
 
 296 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 her. He sharply resolved not to allow himself an evil 
 thought of her until he could do her the poor justice of 
 confronting her with the story. He would not so much 
 as inquire further of the man who lay before him. It 
 seemed like treason now. He went over and bent above 
 him. Then suddenly he knelt beside the pallid form 
 and prayed for pardon in an agony of abasement. He 
 had made his heart a nest for malice and given nameless 
 passions welcome, while the spirit which it was his office 
 to console had fled. 
 
 WHEN HE reached home a little after breakfast-time, 
 Rose met him on the doorstep. She hesitated at his 
 haggard face. Her own was full of wistful intelligence. 
 
 " You have been up all night ! " she cried, reproach 
 fully. 
 
 Then, leading him into the parlor, to which the vacant 
 fireplace and the drawn curtains gave a dreary look, she 
 faced him with an indescribable look of grief and pain. 
 He observed that she was pale, and began to wonder 
 vaguely why she had brought him here. But he was 
 wearied by all that he had undergone since he had left 
 home, and he sank into the nearest chair, while she 
 absently took his crutch, from habit. He looked at her 
 again as he drew off his gloves with a faint sigh, and 
 observed her expression more curiously. 
 
 " What is it, dear ? " he asked. His fatigue made the 
 question languid. " Why have you brought me in here ? " 
 
 " Oh, how shall I ever tell you ! " exclaimed Rose, all 
 her trouble in her eyes. 
 
 " What is it ? has anything befallen " 
 
 " No, it is not she," returned the girl, with a scorn she
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 297 
 
 did not attempt to repress. " It is you, brother ; only 
 you ! " 
 
 She crept with a soft murmur to his feet. 
 
 " Ah, how can I tell you how sorry I feel for you, 
 John ! " 
 
 He took the letter that she had pushed toward him 
 and marvellingly opened it. Suddenly she snatched the 
 sheet from him and, unfolding it, indicated huskily : 
 
 " There ! there ! " 
 
 It was from one of Rose's English friends, and with 
 the cruel casualness of gossip it mentioned the engage 
 ment of the son of Sir John March Rose must have 
 heard of him ; he had visited Judea and knew her 
 brother to an American girl, a Miss Van Cleef. 
 
 Rose was frightened at the pallor which stole over her 
 brother's face as he read. He dug his nails into the 
 flesh as he ran over the brief sentences twice. It seemed 
 as if he would never finish. Then he asked hoarsely for 
 his crutch. All his languor was gone as he rose with 
 grief and anguish in his face. His breath came in quick 
 gasps, and his eyes were lighted with a blaze of passion 
 such as Rose had never known in all her experience of 
 her gentle brother. She wished bitterly that at any cost 
 she had kept it from him. 
 
 She clasped her hands. 
 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 
 His face was thunderous. 
 
 " Can you ask ? " he cried. 
 
 " Don't, brother, don't ! " exclaimed Rose, with the 
 courage of her fear. 
 
 In the midst of his passion he stooped and kissed her. 
 
 " Don't fear, little sister ; don't fear ! Do you think 
 I would hurt her ? "
 
 298 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 A look of disdain passed over his face. 
 
 " Remember that you once loved her ! " she whis 
 pered. 
 
 " Once ! " cried the minister. Rose was quelled and 
 beaten down by the sudden light of piteous love and 
 longing in his eyes. 
 
 She tremblingly followed him to the door, but her lips 
 refused to shape what she wished to say. With the 
 impulse of her habitual care-taking for him, she threw 
 his great-coat over him, while he fumbled at the rack for 
 his hat ; but she feared to oppose herself to him as he 
 rushed by her without a word and out into the rising 
 storm. 
 
 She stood in the doorway with the snow falling, and 
 watched him solicitously as he made his rapid way 
 against the wind. Once she reached out her hand and 
 called, but the wind took her voice and swept it down 
 the street, and her arm dropped aimlessly at her side. 
 She did not know what she wished or what she feared, 
 but his swift limp was charged to her distressed vision 
 with a kind of relentlessness which made her tremble for 
 its purpose. Her eyes anxiously pursued his frail figure 
 struggling against the storm until he ascended the steps 
 which would lead him into Constance's presence. Then 
 a gust filled her straining eyes with powdered snow, and 
 she turned away with a bitter pang.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE wise hesitate to kindle the anger of a gentle 
 spirit. They know that habitually passionate men are 
 never shaken by such rage as, upon rare provocation, 
 visits a just and even temper. We see what strength and 
 sweep all passion, through its unwontedness, has with 
 good men when by chance they are touched by its hot 
 breath ; but the anger of a good man has another power 
 in being righteous. In common it is born of a real 
 wrong, and when a man begins ever so slightly to feel 
 himself part of the machinery of avenging heaven we 
 know what blows he deals. 
 
 Mr. Keator, as he read for the second time the letter 
 which Rose showed him, was devoured by a kind of 
 madness the madness in which peaceful men do murder. 
 He could have borne either Dinkel's intelligence or 
 Rose's alone. He could have forced himself to disbe 
 lieve either. But the thorn with which the dying man 
 had tortured him was pressed quickly home by his sister, 
 and a great rage took possession of him. A wild, fleet 
 ing lament for the end he instantly foresaw to his trial 
 swept through him ; he felt, as one feels in a dream a fall 
 which one cannot arrest, that all was lost ; and then he 
 shook himself and went forth to right the wrong she had 
 done him. 
 
 As he went lamely along the street the sentences with 
 which he meant to sting her began to shape themselves 
 in his mind with horrid fertility. He wished to hurt her.
 
 300 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 It was very simple, what he had to say. It could be 
 done quickly. But he longed, with an incredible longing, 
 for a man whose mercy a few hours before included all 
 the world, and who had never been able to hurt an insect, 
 to make every word a wound. These wounds must be 
 gentle, though. He reminded himself of that. They 
 must be like steel-thrusts that creep swiftly through the 
 flesh, and only make their pang known as the knife is 
 withdrawn. 
 
 As he raised the knocker of her door he shuddered, 
 and a momentary loathing for what he was about to do 
 overcame and sickened him. But he scorned the emo 
 tion with a forced smile, and, taking the brass figure of 
 the reclining lamb serving as a knocker, in his hand 
 again, stoutly sent its summons through the almost 
 empty house. He went up the step and past the woman 
 who came to the door without a word. 
 
 " Miss Van Cleef," he said, briefly, as he began to rub 
 his snow-covered boots upon the mat. 
 
 The girl vanished silently, keeping her wondering eyes 
 on the minister's passion-charged face. 
 
 Constance found him in the centre of the parlor. She 
 went quickly to him with the smile she kept for him, and 
 took his listless hand. 
 
 " You do not look well," she said, as she pushed a 
 chair toward him. " I don't wonder, after such a drive. 
 What made you take it, Mr. Keator ? But I needn't ask." 
 
 She seated herself and awaited his answer with a 
 memory of her smile upon her lips. 
 
 Mr. Keator did not sit down. A sense of the bitter 
 contrast between her manner and his inward thoughts 
 made him shudder. But he turned toward her with a 
 blank look as she asked about his drive.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 301 
 
 " I went down with aunt last night to call on your 
 sister. That is how I knew," she said, vivaciously, in 
 reply to his look. 
 
 " I am glad you called," returned the minister, vaguely. 
 " I want you to know her." 
 
 " You can't wish it so much as I do." 
 
 " No, I think I wish it more," quietly opposed he, 
 drawing nearer to her. 
 
 He felt his quick heart-beats shaking the hand with 
 which he leaned upon his crutch, as he stood before her. 
 Suddenly his lips compressed, and he said with a calm 
 ness which even to him was frightful, 
 
 " I have determined to make her your sister as well." 
 
 The blood fled from Constance's face, and she sat 
 staring at him in helpless amazement and alarm. 
 
 " I have come," he said, " to ask you to fulfil your 
 promise." 
 
 He would have given much at the moment to lend to 
 his tone the indignation of his scorn for her imagined 
 treason. But he could scarcely raise his voice above a 
 whisper. 
 
 If he wished to make a visible effect upon Constance 
 he was not disappointed. She still sat staring at him in 
 stony wonder. He was fascinated and then half appalled 
 by her fixed gaze. What could be her thoughts ? He 
 turned away, setting his teeth. He tried to feel that she 
 was suffering properly ; that she deserved it. But his 
 lively love would not permit him to exult in her pain ; 
 instead, he found himself foolishly pained with her, and, 
 irresistibly impelled, glanced again toward where she sat. 
 Until he died Mr. Keator did not forget the heavenly 
 look of pity on her relaxed and shining face. It beamed 
 from it in a soft glory, and seemed to make an atmos-
 
 302 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 phere about him. He sat down with a sudden giddi 
 ness. 
 
 " You do not mean it ! Say you do not mean it, Mr. 
 Keator ! " she was crying. 
 
 With all his indignation in his voice the minister 
 answered, 
 
 " I should be guilty of a falsehood. I never meant 
 anything more positively." 
 
 A look of anguish crossed Constance's face. 
 
 " You have considered ? " she asked, hesitatingly. 
 
 " I have considered," repeated Mr. Keator, unyield 
 ingly. 
 
 She gazed at him a moment in perplexed dread. A 
 lump hung in her throat. She could not speak. But she 
 commanded herself proudly. 
 
 " You make your request suddenly," she said, with a 
 wan smile. " Give me time to consider." But after a 
 moment she cried wearily, " Ah, it's no use ! I come 
 around always to the same thing. I don't understand," 
 she exclaimed, passing her hand over her eyes in a dazed 
 way. 
 
 "You can understand that you are under an obliga 
 tion," he said, with effort. " I ask you to fulfil it." 
 
 "Obligation ! fulfil!" she whispered, bewilderedly. 
 " Forgive me for repeating your words. I can't seem to 
 make them real to myself. I I know what you mean," 
 she told him. " But I can't believe it is you who say it. 
 This is not my Mr. Keator." 
 
 Despite his righteous anger the minister could not 
 meet her unclouded eyes. 
 
 " It is a mask," she said. " Tear it away, Mr. 
 Keator. I still believe in you." 
 
 " Do not venture to talk of my mask ! " he answered,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 303 
 
 hoarsely, as he rose and caught his crutch with an angry 
 grasp. 
 
 Constance gazed at him in dumb horror. 
 
 "What shall I talk of ? " exclaimed she, after a mar 
 velling pause. 
 
 She also rose slowly and faced him. 
 
 " Talk of your pledge to me ! " he cried, sharply. 
 His mild eyes flashed. " Tell me whether you mean to 
 keep it ! " 
 
 The uncertainty, the perplexity, the wandering pity 
 went out of Constance's face. She gathered herself and 
 confronted him proudly. 
 
 " Did you think I would break my word ? " she asked 
 him, with scorn. " You are indeed not the Mr. Keator 
 I have known and admired, and pinned my faith to. 
 Don't suppose that I do not understand now," she went 
 on, swiftly. "I never understood anything with such 
 dreadful clearness. But you knew why I could not com 
 prehend why I would not. It was my faith in you. I 
 could not believe it. It was the standard which you had 
 given me. I could not think all your life, even at your 
 bidding, a ghastly lie." 
 
 Mr. Keator shrank at the words, and she turned away 
 for an instant to hide her shameful tears. 
 
 " You wrong me you wrong me cruelly," he said, 
 with sad calmness ; but he would not bring his indict 
 ment against her. " One of us must forbear," he said to 
 himself. And indeed he was too much grieved to speak. 
 
 " You are scarcely the one to speak of wrong," cried 
 Constance in answer to him. " Is it no wrong to me that 
 you win such a promise as that I gave, from my trust in 
 you, only to abuse my good-wiil ? I would give that 
 promise again, Mr. Keator. Do not think I repent it.
 
 304 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 But it would be not only because it would be sweet to 
 help you ; but because of my faith that you would not 
 suffer me to help you in a matter like that to my own 
 cost." 
 
 Mr. Keator was touched. He could bear her indigna 
 tion even when it seemed most genuine, but this half 
 appeal searched his heart. Yet there was no gentleness 
 in his voice as he said sternly, 
 
 " I was worthy of that faith. I had the right to it." 
 
 " Ah, was I not sure of that when we made our agree 
 ment there in the garden, Mr. Keator? But what shall 
 I think now?" The minister turned away and bit his 
 lip, while she went on as if with a fresh impulse. " Dear 
 Mr. Keator," she said simply, "that agreement of ours 
 was not a usual one. It was not one that a common man 
 would have had your need for ; and and perhaps not 
 one that a woman who cared less for you would have 
 consented to. Oh ! " she cried, with a little deprecatory 
 accent as she saw his flush. " I did not mean to say 
 that or at least not what that seems to say. I did not 
 intend to say that it was generous, or fine in me. You 
 can't think I have ever felt that." 
 
 " Do not cheapen it. It was fine," asserted Mr. 
 Keator, without emotion. 
 
 " No, no ; it was not. It was what any woman would 
 have done if she knew you. But, Mr. Keator, it was 
 not an ordinary contract that to which we bound our 
 selves. That is what I am trying to say : and we are 
 under obligation to each other to keep its terms by so 
 much the more sacredly." 
 
 It was a sore temptation to retort upon her ; to ask 
 how she had kept its terms. But Mr. Keator held his 
 peace. He had grown afraid to speak. He had resolved
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 305 
 
 that he would not soil his lips with the charge which in 
 his first anger he had meant to bring against her ; and if 
 he spoke he did not know what he might say. 
 
 " Ah," cried Constance, at his silence, " you do not care 
 for that ! Am I wholly to lose my ideal Mr. Keator?" 
 
 Her ideal ! And what of his ? He smiled wretchedly. 
 Again he did not answer. Her false seeming frankness, 
 her hollow appeals were hardening him against her. He 
 was so filled with abhorrence of her studied falseness 
 that he began to find himself indifferent as to the issue 
 of the question between them. He had come to make 
 her pay a penalty ; but perhaps she was not even worth 
 punishing. He turned away from her, weary at heart, 
 while she went on. 
 
 " Mr. Keator, do you remember how you took pains to 
 picture this position to me before you would let me 
 promise ? It was admirably fair and generous in you, I 
 thought, at the time. I can almost remember the words. 
 Wait a moment." She glanced-at him doubtfully as she 
 repeated : " ' Promise,' you begged, ' that if I come to you 
 and say I have failed I have given up my ministry I 
 offer you a life beggared of everything that makes life 
 worth while ; of deliberate malice divorced from all good 
 and noble things except my love you will submit your 
 self to the lot.' Do you remember, Mr. Keator ? And 
 do you think it strange that I hesitate to believe you 
 have fallen to that ? " 
 
 Mr. Keator was greatly disturbed. As she began to 
 repeat his words he had gone over and stood by the 
 fireplace, holding his crutch in his hand and leaning an 
 elbow against one of the supports of the high mantel. 
 His face, as she finished, was bent upon his arm. He 
 bit his lip and stared into the fire.
 
 306 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " I give you up," he said, at length, huskily. 
 
 He did not raise his head. 
 
 " What do you say ? " 
 
 " I resign you. I surrender my claim." 
 
 '' I can't let you do that," she returned, briefly. 
 
 He had thought that the occurrences of the last half 
 hour had killed all his tenderness for her. But at this, 
 with the fatuity of his love, he started and went toward 
 her. 
 
 " Why, Constance ? Why ? " he asked, agitatedly. 
 
 " It is not " she hesitated a moment, then dealt him 
 the blow very gently " for the reason you think." 
 
 Mr. Keator turned upon his crutch and went swiftly 
 back to the fireplace. 
 
 " Pardon me," she begged ; " I did not mean' to 
 wound you." 
 
 " Oh, I know ! I know ! I have always understood. 
 Surely you have not left me in doubt. Only a fool's 
 fancy could have deceived me, even for the instant." 
 
 Constance was pained, but she said, quietly, 
 
 " I was only about to say that since you have made 
 the proposition it is for me to insist upon it. I cannot 
 honorably allow you to retreat. I shall keep my word 
 to the utmost letter." 
 
 Mr. Keator looked from side to side in restless misery. 
 He took up his crutch, however, almost immediately and 
 came over to where she sat, with the energy of her state 
 ment still alive in her eyes. 
 
 " Constance," he said, " have some pity. You do not 
 know . . . Let things remain as if this had never been." 
 
 Constance shook her head with a troubled gesture. 
 
 "Things can never be as they were before," she 
 answered.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 307 
 
 " Is it that you wish to humble me before you 
 yield ? " He stretched forth his hand. " See, I beg it 
 of you." 
 
 She turned away with tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Do you think nothing is due to me ? " she asked, 
 tremulously. 
 
 " Everything. I apologize. I abase myself. I will 
 go away." A loathing for his part in the affair suddenly 
 seized him. " How can I tell you how I hate myself 
 when I think that I have allowed a wicked, momentary 
 infirmity to triumph over my love for you ? To have 
 abused your faith in me, your noble generosity ; to have 
 lived to shock you by the cowardly use of a power you 
 had given me ! I can't tell you how it happened. God 
 and his angels seemed to desert me. I came here in a 
 sort of madness." He drew nearer to her. " You have 
 the best right to your revenge," he said. " I ask you 
 not to take it." 
 
 Constance had controlled herself again and answered 
 with comparative calm, 
 
 " Don't attribute that motive to me, Mr. Keator. It 
 is only justice that I am trying to do justice to yourself 
 and me. Heaven knows it's not easy. Pray don't make 
 it harder ! You have gone too far for either of us to 
 retreat. We must leave it now with God." 
 
 She spoke solemnly, and with a determination which 
 informed Mr. Keator's sensitive knowledge of her that 
 the final word had been spoken. He turned away sick 
 at heart. 
 
 It seemed a long time before he spoke again. 
 
 " Very well," consented he, hoarsely, at last. " I will 
 see that the lot is tried at once." 
 
 Constance rose quickly, with a glad smile upon her
 
 308 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 face, and held out both her hands. He limped forward 
 to take them. 
 
 "Ah, there spoke my Mr. Keator ! " 
 
 She smiled upon him and pressed his hands. 
 
 " Some day," she said, " I hope to be able to think of 
 you as of old as I did before before this shock." She 
 averted her head an instant. " But it would be mockery 
 to say that I do now. You understand, and and if this 
 comes about if the lot is favorable to you, you must 
 not expect too much of me." 
 
 " I expect nothing. I ask nothing," answered Mr. 
 Keator, with dignity. " Good-bye ! " 
 
 He put forth his hand. 
 
 " Good-bye," returned she, absently. 
 
 He limped to the door. She remained standing as he 
 had left her in the centre of the room. But as he 
 reached the threshold, 
 
 " Mr. Keator," she called, softly, going after him. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He turned back. 
 
 " Do you think that God truly works through the lot ? 
 Have you faith in it ? " 
 
 He looked long and hungrily at her. He did not 
 answer, and for a moment she thought that she had 
 wounded him again. But he replied at length, 
 
 "I think that He truly works through the lot. We are 
 both safe in His hands. ' The lot is cast into the lap : 
 but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.' " 
 
 Constance said nothing and after a moment she let 
 him go. 
 
 But she went back into the room and flung herself 
 upon a couch in an agony of tears, calling upon March's 
 name.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 309 
 
 Mr. Keator was horribly unhappy, and sore and grieved, 
 as he went stumbling down the snow piled street. He 
 did not know that he had been spared the ultimate 
 calamity. It would have killed him to see her grief for 
 March.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A FACTIOUS disposition had begun to display itself 
 among the colonists at Gerrit within a month after 
 March's departure. It was an ill-assorted company, and 
 it would, perhaps, not have held together in any event. 
 But March's going hastened the inevitable rupture. 
 While he was among them, guiding, smoothing, energizing 
 their daily work, the opposing elements were curbed. 
 They respected his authority and tacitly owned their 
 obligation of gratitude to him. For, in fact, March 
 owned Gerrit undividedly, and they dwelt upon his land 
 as his guests. They could not blind themselves to the 
 generosity which had assumed all the risks ; and this 
 made a bond of so delicate a nature that the hardiest 
 of them would have hesitated to break it while he was 
 with them. Lincoln, it is true, was his lieutenant, and as 
 such inspired a certain amount of respect ; but his 
 authority wore smooth with the loss of novelty, and he 
 began to find himself in a perplexing condition. 
 
 From Constance, before her departure, Lincoln had 
 studiously concealed his difficulties ; and indeed the 
 thriving village, set in its peaceful valley and filled with 
 laborers constant in gathering home their first prosperous 
 harvest, might very well have flattered the casual eye as 
 a vision of contentment. Constance, at all events, went 
 away untroubled by the forebodings which would have
 
 A VICTORIO US DEFEA T. 311 
 
 tormented her had she known the real posture of the 
 enterprise at Gerrit. After her arrival in Judea she 
 received very regular reports of the progress of the 
 colony. She had had at all times since March's de 
 parture, a sense of responsibility for its well-being. She 
 felt more distinctly and weightily than she remembered 
 feeling of any other commission, that it was her personal 
 charge a charge of which she greatly wished to render 
 a good account. It was she who had sent March away, 
 and if any failure befell because of that, whom else 
 should she blame ? 
 
 With this idea of her stewardship, she had asked 
 Lincoln as an especial favor to keep her acquainted with 
 all that went on within the little world of which he was 
 governor pro tempore. Lincoln was, however, at first able 
 to reconcile it with his theories of the friendly office to 
 tell her somewhat less than all. His weekly letter had, 
 indeed, twice contained vague hints of a dissatisfaction, 
 which would doubtless soon be quelled. But nothing 
 else had prepared her for the startling letter which she 
 held in her hand as she sat at breakfast with her aunt on 
 the morning following Mr. Keator's visit. 
 
 " Mr. Lincoln says," she told Mrs. Echols, as she 
 thoughtfully folded the paper, " that there is a kind of 
 mutiny in progress at Gerrit. Think how it will grieve 
 him ! " 
 
 Mrs. Echols did not ask for whom the pronoun might 
 stand. 
 
 " It is not as if he were here," she admitted, with 
 intelligence. 
 
 " No," repeated Constance, " it's not as if he were here. 
 Oh, I trust it is not serious." 
 
 "Yes, indeed ! " exclaimed her aunt, with the unction
 
 312 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 that the phrase has in the South. " It must have come 
 up without warning," she added. " Mr. Lincoln would 
 have written if it had been brewing long, I should think." 
 
 She looked questioningly at Constance. Her niece 
 returned her glance with a hesitation born of her doubtful 
 tone. 
 
 "I don't know," she said. "What do you think?" 
 she begged, earnestly. 
 
 " You know better than I. You are almost a colonist 
 yourself, dear. You ought to understand these things." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but I don't. Oh, aunt, I'm greatly troubled 
 about it ! " she exclaimed, in an alarmed perplexity not 
 common with her. 
 
 She paused a moment, drawing the letter nervously 
 through her fingers. 
 
 " You know how I feel ! " she burst out. 
 
 " I can imagine," returned Mrs. Echols, sympatheti 
 cally. 
 
 " Well, that's it. It's not my personal concern in the 
 
 welfare of Gerrit so much as Oh, you know I sent 
 
 him away ! If anything happens through his absence, 
 how can I ever forgive myself ? " 
 
 " By remembering that you meant right, I hope, my 
 dear. But that's not the question. Nothing must 
 happen." 
 
 " Yes, that's what I think. But how ? Oh, aunt, 
 
 let us go to-day." 
 
 " My dear child, what are you thinking of ? I've just 
 written Francis we should remain a week longer. We 
 should surprise him out of a whole day's fishing." 
 
 " Don't throw obstacles in the way," she entreated, 
 rising with determination. " I must go." 
 
 " What can we do ? "
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 313 
 
 " Never mind. We will go. It will be a satisfaction 
 to be there. It is intolerable to stay." 
 
 Mrs. Echols did not know of the occasion which lent 
 anguishing weight to her niece's desire to leave Judea, 
 but she perceived the genuineness of her anxiety, what 
 ever its cause, and she was both too reasonable and too 
 much attached to her to hinder her. 
 
 It was a crowded day, for their passage was to be 
 engaged in the coach, and all that they had brought with 
 them was to be packed. The furniture was also to be 
 re-enshrouded, and the rooms once more neatly ordered 
 and left to the friendship of the echoes. The burden 
 which these cares imposed upon Constance was suf 
 ficiently severe, and when it was all over, the house 
 closed, and their boxes and packages carried down and 
 strapped upon the coach, she sank within that friendly 
 refuge thoroughly exhausted. 
 
 As the landlord of the inn came out to give his last 
 messages to the driver, her thoughts went back, despite 
 her fatigue, to the time of her last departure from Judea. 
 She recalled Mr. Keator's ignorant efforts for the com 
 fort of her Aunt Cynthia and herself with a sad smile, and 
 in her memory there rose with painful vividness the 
 picture of the minister standing by the coach door, with 
 her hand in his and his head bared. The eager look of 
 fidelity and confident courage on his face returned to her 
 with a pang. She remembered the strong, calm glance 
 with which he had answered her foolishly trusting phrase, 
 " You must not fail." And then he had said : " Not 
 while you trust me." Surely she had trusted him, and 
 for the fiftieth time she asked herself what had tempted 
 him to this fatal lapse. 
 
 In the midst of her great misery on March's account,
 
 314 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 and on her own, it may seem strange that she should 
 have devoted much thought to this problem. But the 
 long watches of the night before, in which she had been 
 taught through mortal pain the intensity of her love for 
 March, had instructed her to avoid the subject which 
 engrossed all her womanly fears, and she was glad to 
 occupy her mind with anything. She had grown ab 
 solutely afraid to challenge the future, to ask a question 
 of the threatening possibilities of the coming week. The 
 contingency to which she had yielded so readily before 
 Mr. Keator, which, in her pride, she had forced, repre 
 sented itself to her calmer thought as simply appalling. 
 She had no idea of retreating ; but her fancy, when she 
 let it play about the oracle which Mr. Keator was to 
 invoke, filled her with dread. 
 
 Her concern was rather for March than for herself. 
 How would he support an adverse decision of the lot ? 
 Might he not justly accuse her ? She had warned him ; but 
 if she had supposed this among possible events, ought she 
 not to have done more ? She could not rememberwhat she 
 had thought when he had asked for her love ; she only 
 knew that she had felt implicit faith in Mr. Keator. And 
 yet as she looked about to find food for the self-accusa 
 tion, which was a kind of desperate pleasure, it seemed 
 an incredible innocence that she should not have foreseen 
 that a man filled with such a passion as his must fail in 
 the difficult temptation he had set himself. But she 
 always returned to her old belief in him, and when she 
 asked that to say how she could have suspected him of 
 a wrong, under whatever trial, silence answered her. She 
 knew that she could not have had less than the unques 
 tioning confidence in him which he had abused ; and her 
 feeling toward him, as constantly since their interview,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 315 
 
 was one of honest grief for his fall rather than resentment 
 for her own injury. 
 
 She could not help clinging to the frank liking and 
 esteem for him, which seemed to have been immemorially 
 part of her nature, and even in her anger she had known 
 that something, which he would not say, extenuated his 
 ruinous failure. Her imagination could not go so far as to 
 offer a vision of herself as his wife when he should have 
 abolished the Mr. Keator she had known by abandoning 
 the ministry. She preferred rather to conjure herself 
 back to the time when she had been able to look upon the 
 spectacle of herself as his wife, at certain rare moments, 
 with a vague, if alloyed, satisfaction ; when occasionally 
 it had seemed to her that his persistence might some day 
 accomplish its end for lack of rivalry. 
 
 But since then Mr. March had come, and love, with its 
 gift of new eyes, had so belittled these easy theories that, 
 as she looked back upon them, she used her compassion. 
 The thought was fruitful in memories, and all her mem 
 ories seemed to be full of March. As the bitter fear that 
 he was now forever lost to her recurred, notwithstanding 
 her resolve, she gave herself up to the luxury of her sor 
 row, and tried to think that the treasured fact of love, 
 even renounced love, would always console her pain. 
 But at the moment it was itself a far too painful 
 thought to be long pursued. She found time, however, 
 to upbraid herself for the pride which had hidden from 
 him the full measure of her affection and to determine, 
 that if, when they met again, she was not Mr. Keator's 
 wife he should know how incomparably dear he was to 
 her. She was suddenly seized, from she knew not 
 whither, with the whimsical fancy that she should find 
 him at Quinnimont. He had come as unexpectedly
 
 316 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 before. She longed to cast some of her wearisome bur 
 den upon him. In his presence it seemed to her that she 
 should be strong for anything the future held. 
 
 She tried to scorn the hungry wish. But next day 
 when they found Lincoln awaiting them in the coach-yard, 
 a feeling of desolate disappointment came over her when 
 she saw that March was not standing beside him. As 
 Lincoln drove them to the house in which Constance had 
 spent so many happy days, and in which love had first 
 come to her, a premonition of a future crowded with unde- 
 sired gifts of days which would have lost all value, weighed 
 upon her. The happy days seemed permanently over ; per 
 haps this was what .older people meant by experience. 
 It was certainly not what she had meant ; but she remem 
 bered how she had sighed for it even if it should prove all 
 wounds. So far it had been very generous to her, and 
 she bravely said to herself that she must take the evil 
 with the good. Here was an opportunity to show that 
 she had been in earnest in her willingness to pay for 
 experience at any price ; in her readiness to prove herself 
 worthy to know life. She resolved to keep a good heart, 
 come what would. 
 
 Lincoln told them that the trouble at Gerrit had some 
 what subsided, but that he feared the dissension beyond 
 remedy. 
 
 " I wish March were here ! " exclaimed the young man. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," murmured Mrs. Echols, fervently ; but 
 Constance only looked at him anxiously as he added, 
 
 " Perhaps he may come yet in time. That is what I 
 have been hoping for. This difficulty began early in De 
 cember before your departure," he confessed, as he 
 chirruped to the horse. " I thought it better not to write 
 to you, but I did write March advising him to return at
 
 A VIC TORIO US DEFEA T. 317 
 
 once. As I reckon it, he could have been here almost a 
 week ago with favorable winds ; but making every allow 
 ance he must be here within a few days. I should have 
 given up the contest last week if I had not held on to that 
 hope." 
 
 Constance, remembering his agreement with her, had 
 a sober doubt ; yet her heart exulted even at the possi 
 bility. 
 
 On the second day after their arrival Lincoln came 
 over to call upon them, and Constance was rejoiced, but 
 not greatly surprised to see him accompanied by March.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 CONSTANCE never understood how Mrs. Echols and 
 Lincoln so swiftly made known their mutual sympathy 
 for the situation, and vanished from the room in which 
 March found her ; but at the moment she was not 
 inclined to question anything. She glided into his arms 
 and sobbed out the story of her sorrows on his breast. 
 
 She went over the history of Mr. Keator's fall and of 
 his demand upon her. Of the lot she had not spoken 
 when she told him of her pledge in the fly gallery, and she 
 did not venture yet to make known to him the arbitra 
 ment to which she had entrusted her fate and his. 
 
 March was, however, too much occupied with the pleas 
 ure of seeing her again to make far-reaching inquiries, 
 or even to trouble himself as much as might have been 
 expected regarding the main disaster. Indeed he could 
 find heart to be glad to see her overtaken by an infirmity so 
 little part of her usual disposition. His love was founded 
 upon his sense of her unlikeness to other women ; but 
 with the curious illogic of the passion he was glad to find 
 her like other women in her womanliness. Her weakness 
 endeared her to him, and the affection which he had 
 curbed for months overflowed in his caresses. Just then 
 it was the richest privilege in the world to comfort her, 
 and he did not suffer his connection with the cause of 
 her grief to chasten his pleasure. 
 
 " Hush, darling, hush ! " he whispered, as she finished
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 319 
 
 her recital. " What difference does it make ? You still 
 care a little for me, don't you ? " 
 
 She held him off quickly with a light of passionate 
 devotion in her eyes that told him more than he had 
 hitherto been allowed to know. It touched him with 
 rapture. 
 
 He folded her in his arms. 
 
 " Then, dearest, there is no other fact in the world. 
 How greedy we should be to ask anything more ! " 
 
 He smiled upon her as she looked up at him. 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " she vaguely denied. 
 
 But the glorified light on her face did not fade, and 
 she devoured his glance with an almost fearful trust. 
 
 " I haven't told you," he said, as he led her to the sofa. 
 " My mother is charmed. As for my father " he paused 
 with a smile " my father has given me an excellent pre 
 cedent for marrying an American." 
 
 " I fear you'll never marry this one," she whispered, 
 with a pained little laugh. 
 
 " You don't know her nor me," March returned, with 
 a fond pressure of her hand. 
 
 " But, Mr. Keator ! " 
 
 " Yes," owned March, thoughtfully. " Mr. Keator ! " 
 
 " You can't fancy how I have longed to see you since 
 it happened ! " 
 
 " You don't blame me, then ? " 
 
 " Blame you ! " 
 
 " I hesitated to break our agreement. Nothing less 
 imperative than this trouble at Gerrit would have brought 
 me over." 
 
 " I don't need proofs of your truth and loyalty," she 
 said, " and I did need you. So they did at Gerrit. I 
 cared almost as much that you should come for that as 
 21
 
 320 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 for me. I can't forgive myself that it should have hap 
 pened, but if you had not come in time I could never 
 have forgiven you." 
 
 " Did you feel your charge so much as that, dear ? " he 
 asked. " I should have abandoned the experiment be 
 fore I left if I had supposed it would burden you so. It 
 would merely have hastened the end." 
 
 " Why why, you don't mean ? " 
 
 " Yes," said March, quickly, as if the wound were still 
 unpleasantly fresh. 
 
 " You don't intend giving it up ? " she half entreated. 
 
 March turned away. 
 
 " I have given it up," he answered, with sad brevity. 
 
 She laid her hand softly on his shoulder. 
 
 " Poor Owen ! " she said. 
 
 " No, you mustn't pity me. All reasonable persons 
 would say that I ought to be congratulated." 
 
 He stroked her hand thoughtfully. Then he gave her 
 a swift smile as he looked up and said, 
 
 " But we are not reasonable people." He gave a sigh 
 which perhaps stood fora mingled emotion. 
 
 " No," said Constance, calmly. " It's much pleas- 
 anter," she added. 
 
 " Yes : but it has its disadvantages. If I were not 
 unreasonable I should think myself well rid of a foolish 
 philactery. As it is, I am saddened saddened by a 
 diminution of my faith in certain possibilities, of course ; 
 but chiefiy that these men should lose by their folly all 
 that those possibilities might have done for them." 
 
 "And you have disbanded the colony?" said Con- 
 "stance, bringing him back to the main facts. 
 
 " Yes, the colonists all professed to be very sorry and 
 some of them were honestly repentant ; but, of course,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 321 
 
 that was the only thing. They would have disbanded 
 without me. I don't know why they should be grieved 
 when I save them the trouble." 
 
 " They loved you," exclaimed Constance. 
 
 " They are willing that I should bear the cost of their 
 passage home," said March, tersely. 
 
 Constance smiled. 
 
 " Well, that is a proof of liking," she answered. " They 
 wouldn't let every one do that." 
 
 They were silent for a moment. 
 
 " Owen, dear," said Constance, at length, " I seem 
 very safe very securely yours, sitting beside you here, 
 don't I ? But you don't know what may be going on in 
 Judea even at this moment." 
 
 Her voice shook and she made the first advance of 
 her life in running her hand vaguely over his head. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't tell you how could I tell you ? " She 
 drew herself away. " Owen, Mr. Keator is to decide it 
 by the lot ! " 
 
 " Constance ! " he cried, aghast, as he started up. 
 
 " I feared you would feel so." 
 
 She bit her lip and tremulously turned her face to the 
 sofa-back. He took her gently by the shoulder and drew 
 her about. 
 
 " Constance ! Constance dear, don't vex yourself about 
 my feelings. Surely you have enough else. But why 
 did you never tell me that this blind chance was to be 
 the final judge between us? Why did you leave me in 
 ignorance until now ? " 
 
 " Until now it was never important. How could I 
 dream of Mr. Keator's failure ? What good would it have 
 done you ? " cried the girl, afflictedly. " And, you 
 remember," she added, with the ghost of a smile, " that
 
 322 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 you were interested in something else when I told you 
 the story in the fly-gallery ? " 
 
 " Oh, never mind, dear ; never mind ! We have the 
 fact now. That is enough. But I never thought of 
 this ! " exclaimed he, heavily. " Do you think I should 
 have been so light-hearted if I had imagined that this 
 was all our happiness hung upon ? When you told me 
 just now, I was a little shocked at Mr. Keator's failure, 
 but I was not surprised. Perhaps it is easier for me to 
 understand it than for you." He smiled faintly. " In 
 the nature of things you can't appreciate the temptation. 
 Still, I thought he would retreat." 
 
 Constance sighed, remembering how he had endeav 
 ored to retreat and how she had prevented him. 
 
 " Do you think you would ? " she asked him, with mel 
 ancholy gayety. 
 
 " I'm not a clergyman. It's not a question of sacri 
 ficing my ministry." 
 
 " That makes it harder. But he won't turn back not 
 now." 
 
 March turned away desperately and went over to the 
 window. The ground was covered with snow, and the 
 snowbirds were hopping about on its glistening surface 
 and calling one another from the gaunt tree-tops. 
 
 " He puts it beyond reparation by this public exhibition. 
 If it is favorable to him this lottery he will not have the 
 surrender of his ministry to restrain him. He will have 
 lost all reason for remaining in the Church by linking your 
 name with his in this devilish device of the lot. They talk 
 of marriage as holy ! Think of deciding such a thing by the 
 choice of bits of paper ! It is childish ! " exclaimed March, 
 pacing the room, " It is hideous ! " 
 
 Constance turned her anguished face to him.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 323 
 
 " ' The lot is cast into the lap,' " she said, gently, with 
 a memory of Mr. Keator's solemn quotation ; " ' but the 
 whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.' " 
 
 " It is natural that they should defend it with quota 
 tions," returned March. " It must seem just and right 
 to them. They would not do anything that did not, and 
 no doubt it is as good a way as another. Marriages must 
 be so much a matter of chance, in any event. But it's 
 hard ! " 
 
 " He has my promise," she said, quietly. " You must 
 remember that ; and whatever the failure for him or ruin 
 for us we mustn't feel that he is going beyond that." 
 
 Her hands were locked in her lap, and her face wore 
 an expression of acute misery. 
 
 He sank into a seat beside her on the sofa and drew 
 her to him. 
 
 " You are right, darling ; you are always right." He 
 kissed her softly. " And I am wrong. You will always 
 find me so, I fear. Perhaps you might better accept Mr. 
 Keator, however the lot decides." 
 
 She gave him an indulgent smile, but " Oh, we 
 mustn't laugh," she said; " Think if it should come 
 true ! " 
 
 He caught her closer. 
 
 " Don't talk of it, dearest. Talk of death, but don't 
 talk of my losing you ! " 
 
 A light knock came at the door and she rose and took 
 from one of the negro servants the mail-bag which Mr. 
 Echols sent to Quinnimont daily. Among the letters she 
 found one for herself. 
 
 " It is from Mr. Keator," she exclaimed, softly, as she 
 turned it over. 
 
 March waited silently while she opened it.
 
 324 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " It must have been written the day after we left," she 
 murmured, as she began to read. 
 
 " What is it, dear ! " asked March, at length. " Does 
 he relent ? " 
 
 She gave a hard little laugh. 
 
 " I have arranged all as you wish," she read. " We 
 shall be taken together in the lot on Thursday. I will 
 write." 
 
 " What does he mean ? ' as you wish ' ? " asked March 
 as he started up. 
 
 " He wanted to give it up to retreat. When he had 
 made his declaration he was sorry for it. But then, of 
 course, it was for me to insist." 
 
 " And you insisted." 
 
 " Ah ! you don't blame me, Owen ? You wouldn't 
 have had me do less ? " 
 
 March bit his lip. He was a man and a lover ; and 
 her action had put his happiness in doubt the happiness 
 of both in cruel jeopardy. But he was stronger than 
 that selfish sentiment. " Constance," he whispered im 
 pulsively, for answer, as he took her cheeks between his 
 hands, "you are wonderful. It will always be my 
 dearest privilege to have known you, even though we 
 must always live apart." 
 
 She smiled. " It is to-day, you know," she said. 
 
 " Yes ; Thursday. Even now they may be deciding 
 our fate." 
 
 " We shall hear Saturday," she said, thoughtfully, as 
 he drew his hands away. 
 
 " Not to be there to change or prevent : that is the 
 bitter thing. Oh, Constance," he cried, " it is intol 
 erable ! We are standing by here with tied hands and 
 our future is being parcelled out to us."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 325 
 
 " But parcelled out by God," she said, wistfully. 
 He took up his hat and coat. Constance did not at 
 tempt to stay him. 
 
 " Ah, let us hope so ! " he said, with a groan. 
 He stooped and kissed her and was gone.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ROSE came into the library in her working-apron when 
 she had heard her brother enter the house after his 
 visit to Constance. He was sitting in his leathern chair 
 with his head bowed upon his hand. She went softly 
 over and touched him. He glanced up with a quick 
 smile and drew her greedily down to him. He felt the 
 isolation which follows every species of wrong. It 
 seemed to him that he had put himself at odds with the 
 world. Rose was his one sure friend. She was a com- 
 panion sail upon a sea otherwise frightfully desolate. 
 
 She looked at him steadily a moment. 
 
 " You would rather not tell me, brother," she said, ever 
 so gently. 
 
 " How do you guess so well, little sister ? " 
 
 She nestled against him on the great arm-chair. 
 
 " Because I love you, I think," she answered, as she 
 pressed her lips to his forehead. 
 
 He took her hand. 
 
 " Always love me, Rose. Promise me that you will," 
 he begged. 
 
 She saw the piteous earnestness in his eyes. She per 
 ceived that he was much in earnest. 
 
 " I promise," returned she, simply. 
 
 " Whatever befalls ? " 
 
 " Whatever befalls." 
 
 " Oh, I need your love, Rose ! I shall need it more 
 and more now."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 327 
 
 It was a cruel trial to restrain the questions that were 
 on her lips. She was deeply concerned ; she was fearful 
 of she knew not what. But she bravely curbed her 
 affectionate curiosity. 
 
 " Remember that I trust you," was all she said ; " al 
 ways remember that." 
 
 " Am I likely to forget it ? It is because I am sure of 
 your trust in me that I am going to make trial of it for 
 a few days. Believe in me for as long as that, at all 
 events. In good time you shall know all. I would not 
 hide a word from you. But now I shall be in sore need 
 of all your faith in me for a day or two." He turned 
 away quickly. " I cannot cloud it. Bear with me for a 
 little, Rose." 
 
 " For always, brother," and with the perfect tact of her 
 love she slipped silently out of the room. 
 
 Her trust indeed sustained Mr. Keator in the days 
 which followed. It was the single beacon by which he 
 found his way in the fog which life had suddenly become. 
 
 The two days succeeding Constance's departure were 
 always filled to his memory with a sickening confusion of 
 thought. His mind seemed to have become a blank ; 
 but it was the sort of blank on which delirium writes a 
 thousand irrelevancies in her invisible ink, crossing and 
 recrossing; then burning them into intelligibility, and 
 setting them instantly fading again. His brain whirled. 
 He could not command it long enough to make with him 
 self a consecutive argument of his situation. He came 
 to his meals in a daze, and harassed Rose by sitting 
 vacantly silent and eating nothing of the delicacies with 
 which she strove to tempt him. When he kissed her 
 good-night she could have wept for his haggard face. 
 
 Conrad tried to make him aware of his sympathy with
 
 328 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 a trouble touching which he could frame no guess. But 
 his well-intentioned kindness failed, as it had failed with 
 March. Conrad came in secret to Mr. Keator just before 
 the meeting of the elders for which Mr. Keator had now 
 arranged and shyly begged that he might be taken in the 
 lot with Dorothy Velt. 
 
 " I am glad to see you are thinking of marriage, Con 
 rad," Mr. Keator said, kindly. " It is a great rock of 
 safety for a minister." Conrad, keeping his face averted, 
 and rolling between his teeth a grain of wheat which he 
 had found an immense aid in the interview, answered, 
 
 "Yes, I should guess so. Sister Dorothy is a good girl 
 and a proper housekeeper, I should suppose. I have 
 noticed when she came to the sprechens but that's 
 neither here nor there. I wouldn't go for to choose any 
 one especial but the ministers see more of the sisters 
 than the brethren, and well, she's a sweet creature ! " 
 
 At this innocent burst of admiration, Conrad blushed 
 and Mr. Keator assured him that he would propose his 
 name. 
 
 " But," he added, " you must not be disappointed if 
 the lot decides against you. You will submit to the 
 Lord's will, and even if the response should be favorable, 
 you know, as a minister for I shall want to see you 
 ordained soon now, Conrad your marriage will need the 
 sanction of the Conference of the Elders' Unity. God 
 grant that you may be blessed in your love, and that 
 if you must sacrifice it, you may be given the strength," 
 said Mr. Keator. 
 
 Mr. Keator was haunted by one purpose ; pursued by 
 Constance's demand that he submit this question, which 
 had become the question of his life, to the lot. In the 
 labyrinth in which he groped this path at least was clear,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT 329 
 
 and he followed it with the desperate tenacity of the mad 
 man who knows his one bit of knowledge so well. He did 
 not look forward beyond the awful decision. He did not 
 dare. If he considered a moment, in the forlorn strait to 
 which he had come, he was certain that he should not go 
 on. He clung to the letter of Constance's demand. That, 
 at least, he could satisfy, and he went on about the prep 
 arations for carrying out her wish, finding a kind of salve 
 to his conscience in the blessed sense of irresponsibility. 
 Of his own motion he could never have done the thing 
 for which he now carefully laid the train. 
 
 Several missionaries, as their wont was, had written 
 him to provide wives for them at the first meeting of the 
 Conference, and there were besides two young men in 
 the settlement who had reached the marriageable age and 
 were desirous of such partners as the lot might appoint 
 to them. In_ the proper exercise of his power the 
 minister had called a meeting of the Conference for the 
 purpose of satisfying these wishes. Of his own deter 
 mination he said nothing. 
 
 On Thursday morning the elders began to gather, in 
 response to this summons, in the room at the rear of the 
 church used for their deliberations. It was an apartment 
 much employed by Mr. Keator in his own work, and in 
 Summer it became his study, and he wrote all his sermons 
 in it. The light flooded it through many generous 
 windows, so deep set in the masonry, that the heat 
 abandoned its mission before it reached the interior. In 
 the Spring the lilac and syringa bushes, and the like 
 simple shrubs, hung their fresh flowers in at the open 
 casements ; and before the little private door, through 
 which in Summer the gentle mountain breeze made free of 
 the room, a monster horse-chestnut from year to year sent
 
 33 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 forth its trembling shoots, declared itself in swollen blos 
 soms, shadowed the wall with its prodigal foliage, and 
 finally in the Autumn sent it down in a shower for the 
 minister to tramp through. 
 
 The room was very dear to him with its treasury of 
 associations ; and as he looked about now at the walls 
 decorated with portraits of the devoted laborers for the 
 Church in the first hard years of its life in America, and 
 at the long shelves burdened with memorials of their 
 sufferings and conquests, he experienced a sudden pang. 
 The hateful sense of the discordance of the thing he was 
 about to do with all the mild virtue, the unpretending 
 rigor, the scorn of wrong which the precious lives of 
 these men had made vocal for all succeeding generations 
 of the Church's ministers, sent a sharp pain through his 
 heart. Was he not sworn to maintain the tradition of 
 their stainless purity ? 
 
 The pure, benignant visage of Count Zinzendorf, the 
 founder of the Church, looked down at him out of one of 
 the frames. It seemed to the minister's guilty fancy that 
 a reproof contracted his open forehead. The firm lips, 
 with their trace of sternness, appeared about to rebuke 
 him for the dishonor he was about to bring upon himself 
 and the Church. 
 
 Mr. Keator turned away uneasily, and from his 
 removed seat watched the gathering of the elders. Was 
 it possible that on the morrow he might have lost the 
 right to sit among these good men, that his office of guide 
 and counsellor might be filled by another, that another 
 might make his own the associations that had so long 
 been dearly his, that he might sit in this room composing 
 admonitions to his flock and taking the scent of the lilac 
 and syringa in the early Spring ? He looked at Count
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 331 
 
 Zinzendorf again ; he seemed to smile upon him encour 
 agingly. He glanced at the elders ; but he did not need 
 to look long. He knew how pitiless they could be. It 
 was the crucial moment the one reasonable moment at 
 which he might have turned back. 
 
 But a suggestion of the devil insinuated itself. She had 
 deceived him. She had wantonly broken her pledge a 
 pledge of whose value to him she best knew. The whis 
 perings of forgiveness, of self-denial, which came to him 
 from habit, he put impatiently away. What was the 
 residuum of good in the world to him since she was false ? 
 Should he be merciful ? Had she spared him ? Had she 
 not herself urged him to what he was about to do ? It 
 should mercilessly rebound upon her. But in the 
 righteous wrath which suddenly possessed him he would 
 not suffer her to accomplish this act of which he had for 
 the first time a full, reckless perception of the wickedness. 
 He would do it he alone : John Keator and because 
 he wished to do it, not because she commanded it. 
 
 The eldress of the Single Sisters came in at length 
 with her list, and all was ready. Mr. Keator motioned 
 for silence, and forced himself to kneel down and pray 
 for a benediction upon the decision of the solemn ques 
 tions they were about to ask by the lot. Nothing had 
 ever seemed to him so much like profanity ; but, as he 
 went on, the real anguish which lay beneath any sense 
 of the situation he could pretend to himself, translated 
 itself in an honest fervor of petition. As he knelt there 
 among all the officers of the Church, there came over him 
 with smiting force a feeling of the tremendous conse 
 quence of the result ; and he prayed for the watchful 
 providence of God with his whole soul, and as he had 
 never prayed before.
 
 332 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 He rose with a calmness in his heart, that he had not 
 known since he had listened to the -wandering sugges 
 tions of the dying man at Little Slab Hollow. He had 
 the feeling, in which the weakness of humanity always 
 finds comfort, of having transferred the responsibility. 
 He would, indeed, ask for the trial of the lot for himself. 
 But he left the result with God. 
 
 The eldress came over and showed him her list. Upon 
 it were the names of a dozen members of the Single 
 Sisters' Choir. Mr. Keator proposed the first upon the 
 list, Benigna Gardenhauer, for the missionary who had 
 sent from Greenland for a wife. The lot indicated that 
 she was not acceptable. The minister who was willing 
 to leave this delicate question to such an arbitrament, 
 was of middle age and had already been married ; it was 
 therefore thought best to select one of the more sedate 
 sisters for the second challenge of the lot in his interest. 
 Caroline Riddlemoser was therefore taken in the lot 
 for Brother Fiedler. The decision was affirmative. 
 
 The other missionary, who was ministering among the 
 native Indians in Ohio, was furnished with a spouse by 
 the same simple and certain plan, and then Mr. Keator 
 named two brothers in the settlement. These had each 
 a choice, and the lot was first tried for the young women 
 of their own selection. Upon the desire of one the lot 
 smiled, but the wish of the other was denied to him, and 
 Mr. Keator had recourse again to the eldress's list, upon 
 which he presently found the name of a young woman 
 to whom the lot assented. 
 
 Mr. Keator sat, while Conrad's name was proposed, 
 with his head in his hands, meditating nervously upon 
 the announcement that he was next to make. He said to 
 himself that there was still time to draw back. Without
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 333 
 
 the sanction of his voice none of the brethren before him 
 could be brought to believe that he had indulged such an 
 intention. But an excess of the old feeling of proud 
 resentment seized him. The " Yes " in answer to Con 
 rad's question was pronounced, and Mr. Keator felt 
 satisfaction in the result. He bade farewell to it as his 
 last innocent thought, and rose hastily, his face set with 
 determination. His fixed eyes beamed with the light of 
 his resolve. The elders and eldress slowly rose to go. 
 
 Mr. Keator cleared his throat. One or two looked 
 about at him. 
 
 " One moment, if you please ; there is something else," 
 he said, firmly. 
 
 The moving company was instantly silent, and turned 
 toward him with curiosity. 
 
 " There is another marriage to be decided," he told 
 them, in the hard, dry tones which had replaced his 
 gentle voice. 
 
 They came back slowly to their seats. He wound his 
 fingers about his crutch while he waited for them to 
 dispose themselves upon the chairs. His mood seemed 
 to oppress and half awe them, for they sat down in 
 wondering silence. The tremor which had affected him 
 when he began had left him, and he had never been more 
 calm than when he faced them at length. 
 
 " It is my own marriage," he said, briefly. 
 
 A hesitant murmur of pleasure ran about the little 
 assembly. Then Elder Weiss's " I'm sure we are very 
 glad," broke the heavy silence. 
 
 " It is to Sister Constance Van Cleef," pursued the 
 minister. 
 
 It was as if he had cast a grenade among them. He 
 confronted their bewildered faces and knitted brows
 
 334 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 with a hard, unyielding glance. For a moment his look 
 beat down all opposition. But almost immediately Elder 
 Weiss exclaimed in a tone of triumph, 
 
 " She is not a sister ! " 
 
 " Who degraded her ? " asked Mr. Keator. 
 
 The elder hesitated and looked about him. The 
 glances of the brethren unconsciously supported him, and 
 seemed to make him their spokesman. 
 
 " You did, in the church," he -answered, doggedly. 
 
 " Say rather you, Elder Weiss." 
 
 Mr. Keator had always felt aggrieved by the man 
 ner of Elder Weiss's reproof. But he had hitherto 
 opposed to this the feeling that he had asked him to do 
 a disagreeable thing for him, and that to complain that 
 he had done it would be ungracious. That it had been 
 a brutal speech, however, always remained ; and Elder 
 Weiss's casting of the odious burden upon him was, in 
 consideration of all the circumstances, scarcely tolerable. 
 The minister remembered, with sudden energy, what that 
 speech had cost him, and he let his wrath pour itself forth. 
 
 " Do you fancy," he asked, " that I should have rebuked 
 her as if she were a criminal ? Do you dare suppose 
 that I could have made such an unfeeling speech ? " 
 
 Elder Weiss regarded the wall interestedly ; the other 
 elders and the prim little eldress watched the minister 
 in a kind of dumb horror. Mr. Keator paused an instant 
 to control himself. He was fearful of going too far, and 
 he meant only to be just. 
 
 " I shall ask you, Brother Weiss," he said, " to tell me 
 whose prerogative you suppose it to be to dismiss from 
 the Church ? " 
 
 The elder was silent, and at last portly Brother Berg, 
 looking about for countenance, murmured: " I should
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 335 
 
 suppose it was the minister's, with proper consultation 
 with the elders." 
 
 " Surely," assented Mr. Keator, glancing command- 
 ingly down upon them from where he stood. " If I read 
 the canons of the Church aright, it is only your pastor 
 who had the right to banish Sister Constance Van Cleef 
 from the Sisterhood to whose precious privileges she 
 had been admitted. I assure all of you that I have not 
 used that right, and I ask as a minister of the Church to 
 be taken in the lot with one of its members." 
 
 " The Conference of the Elders' Unity will not consent," 
 asserted Elder Weiss, with conviction. 
 
 Mr. Keator paid no attention to this. 
 
 " Are the brethren ready ? " he asked, quietly, but his 
 heart began a riotous beating. 
 
 Elder Berg looked at Elder Englehardt. 
 
 " I suppose so," said the latter, reluctantly. 
 
 They were a long time fumbling about the lots. Mr. 
 Keator began to feel the reaction setting in. He 
 could face this company of sullen opponents ; he could 
 condemn himself before them to resign the pastorate in 
 which he had so long kept their love and confidence, he 
 could carry his ruin proudly out as if it were a triumph ; 
 but he was not strong enough to confront the terrible 
 balance of fates, now in process of decision. He sank into 
 a chair with his back to the whole gathering, and stared 
 wistfully, tremulously out of the window at the bare lilac 
 and syringa bushes. 
 
 It seemed a century, and he listened in an anguish 
 beyond anything that he had ever known to their hurried, 
 whispered conference, their deliberate movements about 
 the room, their clumsy fingering of the lots, which he 
 
 seemed almost to hear rustle in their fingers. 
 22
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 At last he heard a sudden stir and an exclamation. 
 He did not look about. Then they seemed slowly to 
 leave the room. He held himself in his chair as they 
 filed solemnly out, one by one. When the room at length 
 appeared empty he caught the sound of a shuffling step 
 behind him, and Brother Berg touched his arm. Mr. 
 Keator looked up with an agony of question in his face. 
 
 The elder, whose constant smile had fled, as it seemed, 
 permanently, handed him a slip of paper with a single 
 word upon it. 
 
 The letters seemed to burn their way into Mr. Kea- 
 tor's consciousness. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The minister flung himself forward. 
 
 " My God ! my God ! " he cried. 
 
 Brother Berg looked at him with a great pity in his 
 eyes. But he turned doubtfully away. Then suddenly 
 he came back and put forth his hand. Mr. Keator 
 perhaps felt it beside him, for in his misery he stretched 
 out his own without lifting his head. Brother Berg 
 clasped it with honest warmth ; and went precipitately 
 from the room. The minister crouched forward, alone 
 with his conscience and his God.
 
 . , .. .."..-. , 
 
 ^.-c-^-''', : ^^^^ : ^' :: ^--'^-' : -^^: : Z,l^' ? '4>---' : V' \ 
 ''^'''^s^i&^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M^
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE knowledge of all that he had kept from her must 
 have been interpreted in his face when he met Rose, for 
 her look of tender solicitude melted into a kind of 
 diffident reproach. 
 
 " Yes, I have done it," he said, bitterly, in answer to 
 her glance. 
 
 He sank into his deep library chair with his face full 
 of a fixed gloom. 
 
 Rose observed him with a pain deeper than she could 
 say. 
 
 " O, John, John, how could you ! " she whispered, as 
 she dropped down beside him. 
 
 " You remember what you said," he rejoined, coldly. 
 
 " Yes, yes," cried Rose, though her tears, " but I can't. 
 How could I despise you when now, above all, you need 
 my help and love. And perhaps you do not deserve 
 that I should, John," she said softly, drying her eyes. 
 " No, it can't be. It is your modesty again, your readi 
 ness to condemn yourself." 
 
 " Do you think those are words for my acts ? I de 
 manded the fulfillment of her promise." 
 
 " Brother ! " she cried. 
 
 She withdrew herself swiftly ; but as quickly touched 
 him to whisper, 
 
 " Think of your provocation, John ; you are noble and 
 good, but how could any one be good enough for that ? 
 No, no ! it's impossible ! She tempted you too far."
 
 338 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " Look at it in that way if you can, sister. Perhaps I 
 had some excuse." 
 
 " Some ! You had every excuse. I never dreamed of 
 such a contingency when I talked of your failing. Do ! 
 What else could you do ? What could any one do ? It 
 was the only thing." 
 
 " But it was not the priestly thing. Oh, Rose dear, 
 other men may be governed by men's standards, but the 
 standards of a minister of Christ can come only from the 
 Head and Founder of his order." 
 
 Rose was silent. 
 
 " Is there anything else ? " she asked, gently, at last. 
 
 " Everything ! After I had made my demand of her 
 I felt a horror of what I had done. I attempted to retract 
 it." 
 
 " Of course ! Of course ! Oh, John, don't let us talk 
 of your failure. Who else would have done that ? " 
 
 " I don't know, dear, but it was poor reparation and 
 she would not take it." 
 
 " Would not take it ? " repeated Rose, in surprise. 
 Then suddenly : " John, doesn't that prove what I have 
 always said ? She loves you." 
 
 A pitiful smile flitted over the minister's face. 
 
 " Nay, she is proud, exquisitely proud. That is all. 
 And then she said I must decide it by the lot, as we had 
 agreed." 
 
 Rose's lips quivered. 
 
 " And you have done it ? Oh, John ! John ! " 
 
 " You may well reproach me. I did it deliberately in 
 the face of the elders." 
 
 He pressed his head into his hands. 
 
 Rose looked up with a brave smile. " She forced you 
 to it," she said.
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 339 
 
 " No, no don't show me the way to such wretched 
 shifting as that. I did it I alone. I am willing to 
 suffer for it." 
 
 Rose cast her head upon his knees. When she raised 
 it, it was to ask him fearfully, 
 
 " The answer, John ! What was the answer ? " 
 
 He gazed into her gentle eyes a moment, in thought. 
 
 " ' Yes,' " he said, at last, simply. 
 
 She regarded him for a moment in a daze. 
 
 " You must leave the Church to marry her," she said, 
 her face full of sorrow. 
 
 Mr. Keator started up. As he leaned upon his crutch, 
 he glanced down upon her kneeling by the chair, with a 
 grieving look. 
 
 " Marry her ? " exclaimed he. " No, no. You are 
 confused by the propitiousness of it, dear." 
 
 Rose was about to speak ; but he continued, " Yes, I 
 was tempted. Was that what you were going to say. It 
 is true that when the lot said ' Yes' a bitter temptation 
 had its will with me. But you can not think I could yield 
 to it at last. Have I fallen so far that you have no better 
 thought for me ? " 
 
 " Forgive me ! " she begged. 
 
 " Nay, you were right. How can I expect you to keep 
 high theories for my low practices." She made a depreca 
 tory murmur, but he went on. " Ah, my one wrong puts 
 me at odds with the whole frame of things ! " exclaimed 
 he, bitterly. 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " I have gone very far, dear, but even to me some 
 things are still impossible. That, I am sure, is one of 
 them. Do you think I could ever have a peaceful hour ? 
 Do you think life with her would be worth anything,
 
 34 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 stained by the thought of what it had cost ? Your trust 
 in me is dearer to me than that ; my self-respect has more 
 value. An ability to one day face my Maker is infinitely 
 more precious than all the happiness I might hope to find 
 in such an unblessed union." 
 
 Rose tried to speak, but he raised her up, with a far 
 away look in his eyes and went quickly on. 
 
 "At first the temptation shone upon me in a glory for 
 which I was not strong enough. But the still voice drew 
 me back instantly. It was like looking over a precipice 
 for the fascination of it ; it was not, thank heaven, even 
 for a moment a real intention. I saw then ! " ex 
 claimed he, as he threw back his head. There was the 
 light of a great joy in his eyes. " Rose, dear, don't you 
 see ? " 
 
 " I see your goodness, John." 
 
 " The hand of Providence is in it all," declared he, 
 with solemn gratitude. " Don't you understand, Rose ? 
 God will not see my life-work for Him discredited by my 
 personal failure He will not see it come to naught be 
 cause His weak human agent t has not been worthy. 
 Through my sin He leads me out to a deeper knowledge 
 of myself and Him, and a richer power of labor in His 
 cause. In His infinite mercy He gives me another oppor 
 tunity." 
 
 The minister paused with a deep inspiration. 
 
 " Oh, Rose," he went on with the impetus of his rap 
 ture, " do you not see what a ruin all my future must 
 have been if the word of the lot had been ' No ? ' Do 
 you not see that it would seem to have baulked my wicked 
 desire ? I should have lost the inestimable privilege of 
 refusing the good securely within my reach. I can't tell 
 you how happy it has made me. It puts the whole mat-
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 341 
 
 ter upon the footing of the original trial. It rehabili 
 tates my self-respect. It enables me to look up, to be a 
 man among men." 
 
 He seemed borne along on the splendid reaches of his 
 imagination. His buoyant fancy had reconstructed for 
 him in a moment his whole life. He looked into the 
 future with gladdened eyes. 
 
 A joyous light dawned upon Rose's face. She flung 
 her arms around his neck. 
 
 " I have my brother back again," she whispered.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 MARCH was sitting Saturday morning in the room in 
 which he had learned of the blind arbitrament that was to 
 decide the future of three lives. Constance sat near him 
 sewing, an occupation in which she endeavored to find 
 relief for her overburdened thoughts. From time to 
 time they spoke wanderingly of the event which so nearly 
 concerned them ; but their interest was too deep for con 
 versation upon that subject. Occasionally March got up 
 and went to the window, from which he cast his eye 
 rather wearily over the landscape as if he expected to see 
 something start up out of it. Once he saw a rabbit break 
 covert and leap for a moment over the snow ; a chipmunk 
 came out of the stone wall and ran gaily along that rug 
 ged highway. 
 
 They were awaiting the arrival of the mail, for which 
 the servant had been sent into town as usual. 
 
 " Owen, I heard something very pleasant yesterday," 
 said Constance, as he turned away from the window, and 
 came back to her side. " Jacinth has agreed to marry 
 Mr. Lincoln. I have hoped for it ever since I made 
 them known to each other and perceived his interest in 
 her. But I haven't dared believe it possible. It is hard 
 to guess Jacinth's feelings about anything, she says so 
 little, and I was afraid she wouldn't see that Mr. Lincoln 
 was the man of all men she ought to like, because to a 
 casual observer he must seem the last man fitted for 
 her."
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 343 
 
 " She has evidently observed him more than casually," 
 returned March, " and has been gifted, if only for a 
 moment, with your wonderful insight." His tone was 
 less light hearted than his speech, and he rose restlessly 
 and walked over to the window to take an anxious look 
 down the road along which the man would come with the 
 mail. 
 
 " You are glad for Mr. Lincoln, Owen ? " rejoined Con 
 stance, inquiringly. 
 
 " Heartily, dearest, heartily ! " exclaimed March, turn 
 ing from the window and coming quickly over to her. 
 " Don't think I don't sympathize with your pleasure in 
 the arrangement, because of my lame raillery. Nothing 
 could be better. Only I'm not in a mood to rejoice 
 about anything even in my friend's happiness in his love, 
 selfish fellow that I am ! " he ended, looking down into 
 her eyes, as he took her hands with a doubtful smile. 
 
 " We should be glad that every one is not so unfortun 
 ate as we in their their affairs," said she. 
 
 " Oh yes, yes," cried March, " we should be. And we 
 are ! Glad ? We are riotously glad ! Observe our joy ! " 
 His nervous laugh struck harshly upon Constance. She 
 turned away to hide her tears tears for his wretchedness 
 and hers. 
 
 But March at the moment caught sight through the win 
 dow of the man with the mail pouch, and going quickly 
 out he took the bag from him. He brought it in and 
 dropped it in her lap with a wistful smile. Then he sat 
 down and ran his hand nervously through his hair. 
 
 Constance took up the pouch eagerly. 
 
 " The key, Owen ! " she murmured, helplessly. 
 
 She pushed her hand swiftly through her work basket. 
 March suppressed an exclamation as she looked uncer-
 
 344 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 tainly about her. She put down her work and went over 
 to the mantel. As her fingers touched the bit of metal 
 she gave a low note of pleasure. 
 
 They opened the pouch fumblingly together. There 
 seemed an unusually large mail. The letter they sought 
 was among the last. 
 
 " Tear it, dear ! " cried March, as she took up her pen 
 knife. 
 
 But she was willing to postpone the knowledge before 
 which she began to tremble, and, as was her custom, cut 
 the seal. 
 
 " You hold our fate in your hands," said March, in a 
 low voice, as she balanced the unopened letter. 
 
 She unfolded the paper. The writing on it appeared 
 brief. 
 
 " The lot has been taken," she read. " The word was 
 'Yes.'" 
 
 March started up in anguish. 
 
 " Listen, dear ! " exclaimed Constance, softly : " ' Need 
 I tell you that nothing in my life has ever given me so 
 much happiness ? ' ' 
 
 March gave a low cry of rage and clenched his hands. 
 
 Constance read on through a mist of tears. 
 
 " Oh, read it, Owen ! " she cried, with a look of be 
 wildered joy in her face. " I can't ! " 
 
 He took it from her. This is what he read : 
 " It enables me to refuse the infinite happiness it offers 
 me. You can understand how this replaces the trial 
 which your generosity gave me; and suffers me to 
 conquer the bitterest temptation I have known. I can not 
 too deeply thank you for forcing it upon me. Bless you, 
 my sweet girl ! It has restored me to myself. You once 
 wisely refused to let me give you up, but you will permit
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 345 
 
 it, I am sure, now, and help me to bind fast my poor 
 surrender by uniting you, when the time comes, to Mr. 
 March." 
 
 " How brave ! " she exclaimed, as she slipped into his 
 waiting arms. 
 
 For a moment they silently tasted their bliss ; the new, 
 sweet sense of security was too precious to be touched 
 even by the grateful memory of Mr. Keator. But they 
 came back to it almost immediately, and Constance said, 
 
 " How could such a man even seem to fail ? I couldn't 
 understand it when he came to me with his request in 
 the very act of his apparent fall. I understand it less 
 than ever." 
 
 " How does he know about us ? " asked March 
 reasonably. 
 
 " Owen," she cried, with conviction, " that is it ! " She 
 started away from him. " Only to think of my not 
 seeing that ! " 
 
 "What, dear?" 
 
 " That in some way he has mistaken our relation for a 
 betrothal, and found that a treason in me. Poor Mr. 
 Keator ! If he fancied that, what might he not have 
 done ! What had I not given him the right to do ? It was a 
 fine restraint in him to go no further. And I have been 
 ignorantly blaming him ! Oh, I can't be too glad, Owen, 
 that he has made this last, final sacrifice in the face of 
 that, not having learned the truth." 
 
 " It gives it a great dignity," said March, simply. 
 
 " Does it not ? A dignity to which the best triumph he 
 might have won over his first temptation would be slight. 
 Who is better than Mr. Keator, Owen ? " 
 
 He smiled in her face. 
 
 " Not I, darling. I shall always feel my great responsi-
 
 346 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 bility remembering that you might have been the wife 
 of such a man." 
 
 A month later they were married. The rare tears 
 were in Constance's eyes from many causes as she went 
 up the aisle upon Mr. Echols's arm. It was of her father 
 that she was especially thinking ; she believed that he 
 would be . glad to see her walking toward the stalwart 
 figure she mistily saw through her suffused eyes. But 
 no tears were visible as Mr. Keator stooped over, when 
 he had married them by the Moravian ritual, and rever 
 ently kissed her. 
 
 It was afterward, when she attempted to tell him of his 
 error and to thank him for the abnegation which had 
 made her happiness possible, that she found cause to 
 weep. But it was for joy. 
 
 Constance's experience had come to her at last, as 
 it comes best and most richly to all women. It was 
 strangely simple. In the old days when she had longed 
 for it her imagination had not looked forward to a thing 
 of so every-day a quality as wedded happiness. But, to her 
 understanding eyes, every-dayness finally seemed not the 
 least good thing in the world, if it was every-day content: 
 and she was done forever with the superstition of that 
 other day, to come illuminatingly into an early future 
 and be somehow a finer and larger day then ever was, 
 for the reason that she had learned to find a sufficing 
 joy in each day as it passed. 
 
 She was never less than the alert, sensitive spirit that 
 had won March in the old garden at Judea ; but as the 
 little world of which she was securely queen revealed its 
 calm joys to her, she was in every way gentled. Love,
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 347 
 
 which had wrought this in her, instructed, as well, a pride 
 which was at length merely the dignity that became Sir 
 Owen March's wife. Upon her husband she leaned with a 
 dear sense of security, and it is fair to record that March 
 did not grow less worthy of her devotion. When he 
 succeeded to his father's title he did not relinquish his 
 theories because he had become one of a class whom 
 such theories could not profit. On the contrary he 
 accepted his increased power for good to others as a 
 trust, and found one of the best pleasures of his life in 
 domesticating upon his native soil the effort toward 
 better things which he had crossed the ocean to further. 
 His visit to America in failing of its aim had enriched 
 him beyond all hope in making Constance known to him. 
 And was she not now by his side to help forward the 
 very work in which they had labored together at Gerrit? 
 March was very happy, but life even to an English bar 
 onet, is, of course, not a perfectly smooth and kindly 
 affair, and if he kept to the end his obstinately cheerful 
 outlook, it was not because he was ignorant how much 
 of pain and difficulty must enter into every human history. 
 From Mr. Keator, at the station in the West Indies, 
 which Constance had forced him to accept, they seldom 
 heard. But Rose, who complained that her brother's 
 refusal to share his work with her left her idle hours, 
 wrote more frequently. The letters, from whichever 
 they came, revivified always for March and Constance 
 memories which they meant never to lose ; and sometimes 
 when it was Mr. Keator who wrote they liked to make 
 anew to each other the acknowledgment of their 
 debt to him. The story of his sacrifice had been re 
 hearsed between them as often as the story of their love, 
 but, like that, it was endeared by familiarity.
 
 348 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 
 
 " He gave us to each other," Constance was saying, as 
 she sat next her husband in the soft English twilight, 
 and looked musingly out on the mellow Devonshire 
 landscape. " It is a sacred charge to remember that. 
 He might have separated us. He might have taken his 
 own selfish joy. It was his and he refused it." 
 
 " It's not the kind of debt that one can pay," said 
 March, briefly. 
 
 " No, Owen ; but it is better so. I like to think that 
 there is one man besides you, of course, Owen, who 
 could do a fine thing like that, a thing which cost him 
 everything, with no richer reward than his conscience 
 may bring him. That is why he has always been so 
 dear to me, I think because of the calm strength that 
 was so solidly related to the suffering of the world, so 
 finely, almost sadly unrelated to everything else in it. 
 His unconscious, habitual charity and self-denial seemed 
 always to point the way, and beckon me. But more 
 than all they kept before me the certainty that there 
 were still ideals ideals upon which I could always draw. 
 The certainty of that cheers me even now, Owen. No 
 distance changes it. And, though we never see him 
 again, so long as he lives it must be a great happiness 
 to know that somewhere there is such a man." 
 
 It was a year later that intelligence reached them of 
 an occurrence which seemed to Constance the most 
 grievous that she had ever known. Rose wrote them 
 of it Rose, who was even then on her way to Judea to lay 
 her brother's body away in the larch-shaded cemetery on 
 the knoll, and who presently came to them with her 
 immeasurable grief. 
 
 " He had gone," ran her pitiful letter, " in a surf-boat
 
 A VICTORIOUS DEFEAT. 349 
 
 to console the dying moments of a native, who in health 
 had reviled him and his work. The sea was roughening 
 when he set out. I begged him not to go. He said it 
 was his duty. I knew it and knew that if it was, nothing 
 could hinder his going. The cruel water, which has 
 taken him from me, sent a foreboding through me. But 
 he went. He went, and he never came back. For a 
 storm rose in the night, and when we looked on the 
 beach in the morning the boat was there overturned, 
 and a little way off John, cold, silent, with his face to 
 the sky. The waves which had slain him came rippling 
 about his head as if they had done no wrong."
 
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