ament would find even that difficult--that which the most inane of
women could accept with calmness and a smile. You have the magnificent
humility of the truly great. Still it is not appreciated in this world.
Try resting for a while and let your husband love you."

I knew that I was saying, though perhaps in a different way, things which
Norris Whitehouse had urged upon her. Not that she said so. She would
have regarded that as sacrilege. But it was a look, a little trembling
smile, which betrayed the ingenuous young creature to me. I felt that I
was in the presence of a nature very fair and exquisitely pure. It was a
sacred feeling. I almost felt as if I ought not to read the signs in her
face, because she had no idea that they were there.

"I have such horrible doubts," she said suddenly with suppressed
bitterness. "I do not belittle my love. I know that I loved him with all
my heart and soul, and that I gave him more than most women would have
done, because love means infinitely more to me than it does to them. I
knew all the time that I loved him more than he loved me, but I did not
care, for I believed, blind as I was, that we loved each other all we were
capable of doing, and if I had more love to give it was only because I was
richer than he, and I meant to make him the greater by my treasure. Now I
feel that both I and my love have been wasted. Oh, it was a cruel thing,
Ruth. I feel so poor, so poor."

"Louise, you think, but you do not think rightly. _Are_ you poorer for
having loved him? What is his unworth compared with your worth? Isn't your
love sweeter and truer for having grown and expanded? No love was ever
wasted. It enriches the giver involuntarily. You are a sweeter, better
woman than before you loved, unless you made the mistake of small natures
and let it embitter you. You have no right to feel that it has been
wasted."

"Do you think so?" she said doubtfully. "That is an uplifting thought."
Then she added in a low voice, "There is one thing more. It is very
unworthy, I am afraid, but it is a canker that is eating my heart out. And
that is the mortification of it. Can you picture the thing to yourself?
Can you form any idea of how I felt? It grows worse the more I think of
it."

"I know, I know. But, dear child, there is where I am powerless to help
you. If I were in your place I think I should feel just as you do. It was
a cruel thing. I wonder that you bore it as well as you did."

"What! S