At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

132 AT A GIRD’S MERCY, her powers of endurance if this news affected her so little. She must do something. There was surely a place for her, and Helen could manage it. Helen knew what to do, and would gladly have her go. Helen was brave, and would help her to be brave, and she needed all the bravery she could have to live her life from which all the sunshine and the blossom and the song had gone. She had so wished to go with Helen. Now the time was coming when she must go. She arose, and looked down at the crushed flowers under her feet. A slow smile crept sadly around her white lips. She felt a sort of pity for them, they: were so pretty lying with the dirt upon them in the path. She must let no one guess of this strange thing that had come over her heart. She would keep the paper, and maybe after she had read it times enough it might take away that feeling. She could not live for years and years, as she would doubtless have to live, with the icy feeling around her heart. She raised her dainty gown from the dust of the oravel, and took up her scissors again, going down the walk among the flowers. ‘‘What if my flowers are dead,”’ she said, “I will still gather them for mother. After all, these are prettier flowers than those I crushed.” The color was coming back to her face and her lips. She would keep the pallor in her heart. That was cold enough, and no one would know. There ‘was a wound in her heart—there must be a wound in her heart—that had let out all the warm blood that made life so brilliant and so sweet. But this wound should heal, though it leave a scar, and no one would guess of its being there. comicbooks.co