th her
in spirit, feeling the reflex of every pang, and now as the carriage
drove from the door she cried unrestrainedly, to her husband's mingled
bewilderment and concern.

"Are you sorry they are gone? You said you would have no time..."

"I haven't. I'm glad; but, oh, Martin, I _am_ Teresa at this moment,
and it hurts! I know exactly how she suffers..."

"That's impossible. Teresa could never feel in your way, and besides,
dearest, why should she suffer? She's not such a baby as to grouse over
a few days' visit. Especially when she has her man."

Martin knew nothing of the awkwardness of the position, and Grizel
realised that she must appear hysterical in his eyes, and longed to pour
out the whole tale, but it would not do; for everyone's sake it would
not do. There might come a time when his unconsciousness would be the
greatest boon to all concerned.

"It's all the fault of my beastly imagination!" she sniffed ruefully.
"I'm always living through other people's dramas, and tearing my heart
to fiddle-strings imagining how I should agonise and despair if I were
in the same place. You said one day that it was easy to be
philosophical about a neighbour's toothache, but it isn't easy to me. I
feel the horrid thing leaping inside my own mouth, and stabbing up to my
own ear, and taste the nasty chlorodyney cotton-wool in my own mouth.
I'm such a sensitive little thing!"

"You're a little goose," Martin said, laughing. "In nine cases out of
ten, while you have been torturing yourself, the toothache has stopped,
or the poor martyr has shaken off his troubles, and gone off to play
golf. We can't carry other people's burdens for them, darling, they've
got to struggle through by themselves. It's curious with your happy
temperament, that you should have such a lurid imagination."

"No, it isn't! Not a bit curious."

"Isn't it? Why not? I'm interested to hear."

"Because I imagine happy things as well, stupid, and they come out top.
If I worry over other people's troubles, I glory in their joy. You
can't do one without the other; if you don't feel one you can't feel the
other. You may never shed a tear in your life over an imaginary woe,
but _have_ you ever wakened in the morning and thanked God because the
housemaid's young man had come home from abroad?--Have you ever felt
your soul flooded with joy when you saw the sun shining in through pink
and white curtains on to a brand-new wall-paper you had j