e. When she did, she said:

"Margaret, do not you think people had better not persuade themselves
and their very intimate friends that they are happy when they are not?"

"They had better not think, even in their own innermost minds, whether
they are happy or not, if they can help it."

"True: but there are times when that is impossible--when it is far
better to avoid the effort. Come--I suspect we may relieve each other
just now, by allowing the truth. I will own, if you will, that I am
very unhappy to-night. Never mind what it is about."

"I will, if you will," replied Margaret, faintly smiling.

"There now, that's right! We shall be all the better for it. We have
quite enough of seeming happy, God knows, beyond these doors. We can
talk there about kittens and cold fowl. Here we will not talk at all,
unless we like; and we will each groan as much as we please."

"I am sorry to hear you speak so," said Margaret, tenderly. "Not that I
do not agree with you. I think it is a terrible mistake to fancy that
it is religious to charm away grief, which, after all, is rejecting it
before it has done its work; and, as for concealing it, there must be
very good reasons indeed for that, to save it from being hypocrisy. But
the more I agree with you, the more sorry I am to hear you say just what
I was thinking. I am afraid you must be very unhappy, Maria."

"I'm in great pain to-night; and I do not find that pain becomes less of
an evil by one's being used to it. Indeed, I think the reverse happens;
for the future comes into the consideration."

"Do you expect to go on to suffer this same pain? Can nothing cure it?
Is there no help?"

"None, but in patience. There are intermissions, happily, and pretty
long ones. I get through the summer very well; but the end of the
winter--this same month of February--is a sad aching time; and so it
must be for as many winters as I may have to live. But I am better off
than I was. Last February I did not know you. Oh, Margaret, if they
had not brought you up from under the ice, the other day, how different
would all have been to-night!"

"How strange it seems to think of the difference that hung on that one
act!" said Margaret, shivering again at the remembrance of her icy
prison. "What, and where, should I have been now? And what would have
been the change in this little world of ours? You would have missed me,
I know; and on that account I am glad it ended as it