San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-11-05

Case, III WOulu Dt ike OIi6 ldSO NAIL IlldO
breaks the camel's back.
She felt this to day; but still, as time
went on she bore it, for it so rarely hap
pens that anything is too hard to bear.
She bore it, and presently, as day sue
ceeded day, and all around her in her
little quiet world went on as it had done
before, it began to be possible to her
even to forget at times that a new bur
den had been laid upon her. She began
to say to herself sometimes, perhaps
he does not know,o and to think to her.
self that he did not, and that perhaps
he would never know. The breath that
she had dreaded for little while to
draw came back again more freely.
''Ah, if he should not knowl'' she would
say to herself, and day after day she
used to pray to God, sometimes in an
agony of tears, for power to keep her
secret hidden. 1t seemed to her like the
last prayer that there was left for her to
make now, She had prayed once for
deliverance from this trouble, but no
deliverance had ever come, and none
now would ever come; so now she pray
ed only for concealment of it,-not for
restitution of the life that had BEEN but
only for preservation of his life, stunt
ed and clouded and lonely as twas; for
leave to live for few quiet years; not
to be happy (she never asked for that,
but only tobe left in peace; to be allow
ed to rest here and live forgotten. To
have no being out of this one little spot
of earth: to have passed away from the
memory of all other places, in the world,
as if she had been dead-her prayers
for herself had shrunk into this one
petition now. And sometimes it SEEM
ed to her as if God at last would hear
her; as if He had denied all other pray
ers because she had asked too much,
but yet would grant this last and least
one. even though the little boon was
only to be given to her (lest it should
become too sweet imbittered by daily
fear.
SO, though she had rebelled at first,
and said it would be too hard for her to
bear. presently she submitted to the bur-
den of this fear better than most people
would have submitted to it, with the
patience that comes from long endur-
ance. She got used to bear it as the
DAYS passed on. The touch of finger
over a skinned wound may make it
shrink, but it will not make it shrink as
sensitively as it did when it was raw,
and the rawness of the new sore got
healed little as day after day went on
and brought no change.
One day, when they happened to meet
for moment at her gate, Mr.. Gilbert
spoke to her, and afterward on other
occasions they spoke together again,
till gradually she grew accustomed to be
addressed by him; and could bear to
hear his voice without the blood flush
ing to her face. For a little while at
first she never saw him without the
80 +ha;,. 6rct intoryioyy nchiDu
back upon her, and causing her an ag-
ony of dread and shame: but by degrees
| the sharpness of this first emotion pass
ed away.-or it would come perhaps
only by fits and starts, and she would
be able to look at him and speak to him
without the sole thought in her mind
| being the thought that he knew her Sc
cret.
Amongst the strange things of our
everyday life one of the strangest is
| how we can forget! Esther thought af-
ter she had seen George Gilbert first,
| that to that man it would never be pos
sible for her in this world to speak with
out passionate remembrance of the
| thing that she had said to him; and vet
| it became possible. One day before the
summer ended they walked side by side
for half mile, talking together, and
she came into her own room when she
had parted from him with her heart
scarcely beating faster than it would
have done if she had talked to any COM
mon stranger in the place. A couple of
| months had already deadened her men,
| DRY, and made the thing possible that
| she had thought would 7leUer be possible.
| Another day she laughed at something
| that he had said to her, and came away
afterward thinking of it with strange
kind of dull wonder. Were they pair
of hypocrites, she thought-he and she,
each acting part, and feigning some
| thing to deceive the otherp Did she
| forget indeed, or only pretend to forget
when she was with himp Did he know
her secret, and was he watching her
| while he went on talking to her as any
one might have talked?
She shuddered as she went away think
ing this. There were many moments
still when she looked at him with dread
and fear, and grew sick over the cruel
question which she could not answer;
but yet, steadily and surely as the days
went on, sort of veil of forgetfulness
came between her and her keen memory
of that first days meeting. The veil
got rent sometimes, but it closed again.
1t seemed to her that she had feared
too much at first that he knew her Sc
cret: her first panic had made her NOR
!! bid. HE does not know it," she would
say sometimes to herself now. "Surely
he cannot know it, or he would not be
like this to mep"
For George Gilbert was courteous to
her with even a marked degree of
courtesy; though this was not, because
he did not know her story, but because,
knowing the whole of it, he said to him
self-"If she has not deserved what has