ich yet she could not forget. And what had all
that to do with the region here? The blow had fallen upon her far from
here amid the surroundings of her home, by the edge of a sound with
changing waters, under pale green beech-trees. Yet it hovered on the
lips of every pale brown hill, and every green-shuttered house stood
there and held silence concerning it.

It was the old sorrow for young hearts which had touched her. She had
loved a man and believed in his love for her, and suddenly he had chosen
some one else. Why? For what reason? What had she done to him? Had she
changed? Was she no longer the same? And all the eternal questions over
again. She had not said a word about it to her mother, but her mother
had understood every bit of it, and had been very concerned about her.
She could have screamed at this thoughtfulness which knew and yet should
not have known; her mother understood this also, and for that reason
they had gone traveling.

The whole purpose of the journey was only that she might forget.

Mrs. Fonss did not need to make her daughter feel uneasy by scrutinizing
her face in order to know where her thoughts were. All she had to do
was to watch the nervous little hand which lay beside her and with
such futile despair stroked the bars of the bench; they changed their
position every moment like a fever-patient tossing from side to side in
his hot bed. When she did this and looked at the hand, she also knew how
life-weary the young eyes were that stared out into the distance, how
pain quivered through every feature of the delicate face, how pale it
was beneath its suffering, and how the blue veins showed at the temples
beneath the soft skin.

She was very sorry for her little girl, and would have loved to have had
her lean against her breast, and to whisper down to her all the words of
comfort she could think of, but she had the conviction that there
were sorrows which could only die away in secret and which must not
be expressed in loud words, not even between a mother and daughter.
Otherwise some day under new circumstances, when everything is building
for joy and happiness, these words may become an obstacle, something
that weighs heavily and takes away freedom. The person who has spoken
hears their whisper in the soul of the other, imagines them turned over
and judged in the thoughts of the other.

Then, too, she was afraid of doing injury to her daughter if she made
confidences too easy. She did n