"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"

But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found
me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I
love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a
man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could
be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong
for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost
once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so
calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes
for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark
half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back
dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had
expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them
here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only
seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.

Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock
had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must
sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim
reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little
but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good,
and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and
beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her
choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget
that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that
dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how
happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in
brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the
darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If