ds. What strange
intelligence was that which passed between them through the diamond eyes
and the little beady black ones?--what subtile intercommunication,
penetrating so much deeper than articulate speech? This was the nearest
approach to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb
intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute mothers
looking on their young. But, subtile as it was, it was narrow and
individual; whereas an emotion which can shape itself in language opens
the gate for itself into the great community of human affections; for
every word we speak is the medal of a dead thought or feeling, struck in
the die of some human experience, worn smooth by innumerable contacts,
and always transferred warm from one to another. By words we share the
common consciousness of the race, which has shaped itself in these
symbols. By music we reach those special states of consciousness which,
being without form, cannot be shaped with the mosaics of the vocabulary.
The language of the eyes runs deeper into the personal nature, but it is
purely individual, and perishes in the expression.

If we consider them all as growing out of the consciousness as their
root, language is the leaf, music is the flower; but when the eyes meet
and search each other, it is the uncovering of the blanched stem through
which the whole life runs, but which has never taken color or form from
the sunlight.

For three days Elsie did not return to the school. Much of the time she
was among the woods and rocks. The season was now beginning to wane, and
the forest to put on its autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning
to soften the landscape, and the mast delicious days of the year were
lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It was not very
singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which the
change of season must soon drive her. But Old Sophy saw clearly enough
that some internal conflict was going on, and knew very well that it must
have its own way and work itself out as it best could. As much as looks
could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, to be sure, that
she could not love. Something warped and thwarted the emotion which
would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an emotion was
striving with her against all malign influences which interfered with it
the old woman had a perfect certainty in her own mind.

Everybody who has observed the