“ She and Jo attacked poor Donelle's position and were indignant that they were obliged to do so; they, women and wise; she, a stubborn and helpless girl!
"I couldn't leave Mamsey," was her only reply, and she looked faint from struggle.
"But Mam'selle does not want you!" Mrs. Lindsay said almost brutally, seeing that she had succeeded only too well in preserving this girl for Jo. "You have no right to become a burden, Donelle, when you have the opportunity of independence."
"Am I a burden?" Donelle turned weary, patient eyes on Jo. And Jo could not lie. That white, girlish face wrung her heart. ”

“ Longville was whispering as if he feared the cat purring under the stove would hear, "some months later, what happened then." Marcel rummaged in her litter of bleak memories.
"Oh! Cecile died!" She brought forth triumphantly.
"Cecile died, yes! And Mam'selle went away. And what for?" The whispered words struck Marcel's dull brain like sharp strokes.
"I do not know," she faltered.
"You cannot guess—and you a woman?"
"I cannot."
"Then patch this and this together. Why does a woman go away and hide when a man has deserted her? Why?" ”

“ Poor Jo! What Point of Pines was destined to think was impossible for her to conceive, because her planning was so wide of the reality that was to ensue. Tossing and restless, Jo tried to laugh her sudden resolve to scorn, but it would not be scorned either by reason or mirth.
"Very well!" she concluded for the second time, "I'll adopt a child, a man child! No girl things for me. I could not watch them straining out for their lives with the chance of losing them. A man can get what he wants and I'll do my best, under God, to make him merciful." ”

“ Tom looked at his group, his father, Marcel, Longville, Jo, and Donelle, turned a last glance at the white, set face of Father Mantelle, and so said good-bye to Point of Pines.
Together Jo and Donelle returned to the little white house. It was like going back from a freshly made grave.
"I'll not help the bad business, no, not I!" vowed Mam'selle, the hard look still upon her face. Donelle looked piteously at her.
"It is a great evil, a damnable sin; no words can make it right. For us to work and forgive is but to help the sin along. I will not stand for the cursed wrong." ”

“ Alice Lindsay's eyes grew dim.
"Life is not all that is lying in wait for the child," she thought. "What is love going to do with her?"
And then, it was two days before they were to start for the States, Donelle went for a walk along the quiet highway! She had bidden Jo good-bye! Her heart ached with the haunting fear that she had not been quite sure about Mamsey. Was it enough that she was going to prepare for life? Were her purpose and joy quite unselfish? How about those long empty days, when the Walled House would be but a memory? ”

“ Then Jo caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the stove! As she looked, her excitement lessened, the depression of the afternoon overcame her. She acknowledged that she looked old and ugly. A woman first to be despised, then ridiculed, by men. "Buy a husband!" She, Jo Morey, who had once had her vision and the dreams of a woman. She, who had had so much to offer in her shabby youth, so much that was fine and noble. Intelligence that had striven with, and overcome, obstacles; a passion for service, passion and love. ”

“ But would Langley have been coming to her with his child had he been guilty of the crime with which he was charged? And Donelle's words: "They will believe me. Let me tell, I saw how it was."
Mam'selle, stiff with cold, smiled with rare radiance as one might who, considering her dishonoured dead, knows in her heart that he is innocent.
"If the child ever remembers, then I can speak," thought poor Jo. "I believe the man who came to the Home is the guilty one. He wanted the girl, wanted to hush her story. He must think her dead, dead, unless she can prove—the truth." ”

“ But Jo did not dismiss her boarder. His adaptability won her from the start and, although she frowned upon him, she cooked for him like an inspired creature and hoped, in her heart, that she might prove worthy of the fulfilment of her dreams. To Donelle's part in the arrangement she gave, strangely enough, little thought except that the money would ease the future for the girl. Perhaps poor Jo, simple as a child in many ways, believed that it was inherent in a boarder to be exempt from the frailties of other and lesser men. ”

“ I grew to love Donelle Morey and learned to know what love was for the first time in my life. Oh! I know what you, what our world would say; she's not your kind, their kind. But before God, she's my kind! I cannot set her aside. I did not oppose your wishes, Katherine, even before I saw this girl. I felt I had no right to stand in your way. Have you a right to stand in mine, now? Is there no justice in my case? Katherine, you think only of yourself. You are a selfish woman!"
Dumbly Katherine looked at Norval. She was capable of drawing only one conclusion—he was a man! ”

“ Stolen was what Longville really thought. Ready money, as much as he could lay hands on, was the dearest thing in life to him and the fun of having any one scrimping and delving to procure it for him was a joy not to be lightly thrown away. And might he not accomplish all he had in mind by giving Jo her chance? He did not want the land and the ramshackle house, except for what they would bring in cash; and if Mam'selle must slave to earn, might she not be willing to slave in his kitchen as well as in another's? ”

“ Marriage, what does that mean to such as you, Pierre Gavot? And you think I would give up my clean, safe life for anything you have to offer? Do men think so low of women?"
Gavot snarled at this, his lips drew back in an ugly smile.
"God made the law for man and woman, Mam'selle——"
"Stop!" Jo stood up and flung her head back. "Stop! What do such as you know of God and his law? It's your own law you've made to cover all your wickedness and selfishness and then you—you label it with God's mark. But it's not God's fault. We women must show up the fraud and learn the true from the false. ”

“ Mantelle was deceived by the tone and words.
"You have shown me that a man cannot be a friend to a woman! He cannot give her justice."
"You are not speaking to a man, daughter!"
The desire to laugh again consumed Jo, but she mastered it.
"In that capacity alone did I regard you, Father Mantelle, and you have failed me. For the rest, I let no one stand between my conscience and my God! No. If I ask help again it will be from a woman; she at least can understand."
"A woman is hardest upon women in such cases as yours, Mam'selle!" ”

“ The snow was deep and glistening, the sky blue and cloudless and the pines cracked in the cold like the rifles of hunters in the woods. Donelle crept, a little, pale ghost, from the north chamber to the sunny living room. By putting her hand on Nick's head she walked more steadily and laughed at the progress she made. Jo tucked her up on the hard couch under the glowing begonias and geraniums.
"Good Mamsey! It's like coming back from a far, far place," whispered the girl. As strength returned Donelle grew often strangely thoughtful. ”

“ Jo went back to her chair and Donelle dropped beside her and quietly told her pitiful story; both women sat like dead figures while they listened.
"You see, Mamsey, there was no other way, I had to do something quick. But," and here she smiled dimly, "there must have been some reason for what happened. Maybe the love was so big it caught him and would not let him go. I do not know, but just as you have kept still about my father after he left you, so I am going to keep still about my man. Tom knows, you, and now Marcel Longville, know. No one else matters, shall ever matter!" ”

“ Don't you think something you are afraid of being sometimes keeps you from being what you want to be?"
"Yes. But, little girl, come, some time, to the cabin in the woods and play for me; will you? I might help you. And you could help me, I am trying to find my place, too."
"You?"
"Yes, Donelle." Then, quite irrelevantly, as once Tom Gavot had done, he said: "Your eyes are glorious, child, do you know that? The soul of you shines through. Donelle, it is almost as bad to starve a soul as to kill it. Will you bring the fiddle some day?" ”

“ The power of a look is mighty. The mere instant that Norval had gazed upon Donelle through the window was sufficient to carry the meaning in the man's mind to the sensitive girl.
It took her some time to translate the truth as she sat under the trees on the hilltop, but slowly it all became clear.
"He does not know, but he thinks wrong of me." Donelle spoke aloud as if repeating a lesson.
"Why should he think wrong?" questioned the hard teacher.
Then Donelle remembered her father and Jo, and the word with which Pierre Gavot had polluted her life. ”

“ He got Jo at the oven on canvas for the spring exhibit. Donelle silently wept before it, kissed the blessed face, and gave Law a bad half hour painting off the kiss!
Always while life lasted Donelle was to look back upon those studio days as a sacred memory. Life was using her and she was ready to pay—to pay. New York, until years later, meant to her only three high notes: terror of its bigness and noise, patience while she waited with Mary Walden until she was used, glory as she served the man she loved. ”

“ And Law knew whereof he spoke.
"But you?" he lifted his eyes to Donelle's white, sweet face.
"I? Why, it is all right for me, Man-Andy. You see, there are many kinds of love, and Tom, my husband, why, I love him. He is strong, and oh! so safe. When his country does not need him any more, I will make him happy. I can. I am sure I can, for Tom is not one who wants all. He has had so little in his life that he will be glad, very glad with me. He has the big love, too, Man-Andy."
"You are quite beyond me!" muttered Law. "You and your Mam'selle, you are a pair." ”

“ Norval did the thinking. He thought of the quickest possible method of setting Katherine free and making it right for him to kiss Donelle. He thought of the wild realization of his true nature—a nature that had been distorted and contracted by inheritance and training. He did not want the beaten tracks, that had always been the trouble. He wanted the unbroken trails, God! how he had thirsted and hungered for just what this little, wild, sweet thing in his arms represented. Love, simple, primitive love, music, understanding! And then Norval thought of Anderson Law! ”

“ And young girls innocent and longing do not count the cost. Oh! Mam'selle, have you thought of Donelle?"
Poor Marcel's eyes were tear-filled.
Jo looked dazed and helpless. Presently she said, with that slow fierceness people dreaded:
"Marcel, I haven't lived my life for nothing. No man fixes my life for me nor labels me or mine. Donelle is nothing but a child. Why, look at her! When she's a woman, if a man wants her, he's going to hear something that I'm keeping just for him, and unless he believes it, he's not fit for the girl. In the meantime, my boarder is my boarder." ”

“ Katherine tried to repress a sob. Her anger, too, was rising.
"Good God!" gasped Norval, forgetting his wife's hatred of profanity.
Katherine reached for the book and held it to her hurt heart.
"You are selfish, you are an egotist, Jim. Your talent, your freedom to develop it have made you callous, brutal. There are more ways of killing a woman than to—beat her. Now that I am sure I have a sacred spark that must be kept alive, I shall demand my rights; freedom equal to your own!" ”

“ All that I had to offer, and I had much, Gavot, much, counted as nothing with men because their eyes were held by this face of mine and could not see what lay behind.
"Perhaps that was God's way of saving me. I thought that for the first when I saw Margot dying.
"I had my love killed in me, but the desire was there for years and years; the longing for a home of my own and—children, children! After love was gone, after I staggered back to feeling, there were times when I would have bartered myself, as many another woman has, for the rights that are rights. ”

“ Jo watched her girl with eyes that often ached from unshed tears.
"It will be the death of her," she confided to Anderson Law. "She'll break."
"No," Law returned, "she will not break. She's as firm and true as steel; she's getting ready."
"Ready for what?" Jo's voice shook.
"For life. So many, Mam'selle, simply get ready to live. Life is going to use this little Donelle."
"Men have caused a deal of trouble for women," Jo remarked irrelevantly.
"Ah! there you have us, Mam'selle. The best of us know that we're bad bunglers. Most of us, in our souls, are begging your pardon." ”

“ With that Gavot, big, handsome, and breathing hard, strode from the tavern and took to the King's Highway.
The wind rushed past him; pushed ahead; pressed at Jo's door with its warning. But she did not speak, and only when Gavot himself thumped on the panel was Jo roused from her revery and Nick from his puppy dreams.
"Who's there?" shouted Mam'selle, and clumped across the floor in her father's old boots. She slipped on one of the rugs and slid to the entrance before regaining her balance. ”