radiant Flora, of hope and happiness superior to fate. It was one of
those times when the excited soul transfigures the world, and we
marvel how we could ever succumb to a transient sorrow while the whole
universe blooms, and an infinite future waits to open for us its doors
of wonder and joy.

"In this state of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my
arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad,
and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her
better than mirth.

"'So,' she sighed, 'all our little romances come to an end!'

"'Not so,' I said; 'or if one romance ends, it is to give place to
another, still truer and sweeter. Our lives may be all a succession of
romances, if we will make them so. I think now I will never doubt the
future; for I find, that, when I have given up my dearest hopes, my
best-beloved friends, and accepted the gloomy belief that all life
besides is barren,--then comes some new experience, filling my empty
cup with a still more delicious wine.'

"'Don't vex me with your philosophy!' said Flora. 'I don't know
anything about it. All I know is this present,--this sky, this earth,
this sea, and the joy between, which I can't give up quite so easily
as you can, with your beautiful theory, that something better awaits
you.'

"'I have told you,' I replied,--for I had been quite frank with
her,--'how I left America,--what a blank life was to me then; and did
I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest