idea of his loving me had made me feel beautiful. That was true!--my
dear, I almost believe I should have grown into beauty if I had been
sure of his love."

I understood that; she was perfectly right in what to the entirely
commonplace person would seem a fanciful theory. Love makes all
things fair, and anyone who is conscious of being tenderly loved
grows lovely, as a rose that is conscious of the sun grows into form
and colour.

"Well, it was all over then,"--she ended, with a sigh, "I never was
quite myself again--I think my nerves got a sort of shock such as
the great novelist, Charles Dickens had when he was in the railway
accident--you remember the tale in Forster's 'Life'? How the
carriage hung over the edge of an embankment but did not actually
fall,--and Dickens was clinging on to it all the time. He never got
over it, and it was the remote cause of his death five years later.
Now I have felt just like that,--my life has hung over a sort of
chasm ever since I lost my love, and I only cling on."

"But surely,"--I ventured to say--"surely there are other things to
live for than just the memory of one man's love which was not love
at all! You seem to think there was some cruelty or unhappiness in
the chance that separated you from him,--but really it was a special
mercy and favour of God--only you have taken it in the wrong way."

"I have taken it in the only possible way,"--she said--"With
resignation."

"Oh, do you call it resignation?" I exclaimed--"To make a misery of