"My dear, my dear, life is short. I am an old man, and yet looking back
it seems but yesterday since I was a boy beginning life. Climbing the
hill, my dear, climbing the hill; and when the top was gained, when I
stood there in my young manhood, I thought that the world belonged to
me. And then the descent, so easy and so swift. The years seem long when
one is climbing, but they are as weeks when the top is passed and the
descent into the valley begins." He paused. He passed his hand across
his forehead. "I meant to speak of something else, of you, child, of
your life, of love and happiness, and of those things that should be
dear to all us humans."

"I know nothing of love, and of happiness but very, very little," she
said.

He took her hand and held it. "You shall know of both!" he promised.
"There is strife, there is ill-feeling between you and that lad, your
husband."

She wrenched her hand free, her face flushed gloriously.

"You!" she cried. "You too !"

"Yes, I too! I sought him out yesterday, and asked him to this house on
purpose that you and he should meet, praying that the meeting might
bring peace to you both. I knew the lad's father as I knew yours. Alicia
Linden wrote to me and told me all about this unhappy marriage of yours.
She told me that she loved you both, that you were both good, that life
might be made very happy for you two, but for this misunderstanding--"

"Don't!--don't. Oh, General Bartholomew, how can I make you understand?