presently.

"Why shouldn't they be?" answered Sophie, coming back from her reverie
with a sigh. "I'm sure Bressant's are: if they weren't--"

She sank again into thought, and another long silence followed. This
time Cornelia's hands were still, but she watched Sophie closely.

"Well--suppose they weren't--suppose he were to turn out not quite so
high-minded, and all that, as you think him: you would stop loving him,
wouldn't you?"

"Why do you suggest it!" cried Sophie, almost with a sob. She bent down,
resting her face upon her arms, and against the rock. "That question has
come to me once before. How can I know? If he were to degenerate
now--now, after I have told him that I love him--it must be because he
no longer loved me; and I should have no right to love him, then."

Cornelia looked down, for there was a certain light in her eyes which
had no right to be there. When she thought it was subdued, she raised
them again.

"Shouldn't you hate him always afterward? Shouldn't you want to kill
him?" demanded she, in a low voice.

"I should want to kill only the memory of his unworthiness," replied
Sophie, her voice rising and clearing, while she regarded her sister
with a full, bright glance. "As to hating him--I cannot hate any one I
have loved, Neelie." She raised herself up as she spoke, and sat erect.

"Well, you're a strange girl!" said Cornelia, who was a little confused.
"I don't see how you can ever be either happy or unhappy. Nothing human
seems to have any hold upon you."

"I'm very human," returned Sophie, shaking her head. "There are some
things, I think, would soon drive me out of the world, if God wore to
send them to me."

The idea of death, when brought home to Cornelia, never failed to affect
her. If she had been planning the destruction of an enemy, she would
have wept bitterly at the sight of that enemy's dead body; nay, even at
a vivid account of his death. Sophie's words brought tears to her eyes
at once, and a quaver into her voice.

"Don't--please don't talk that way, dear; it isn't so easy to die as you
think, I'm sure. The idea of dying because anybody was wicked! It's only
because you've been ill, and have got into the habit of expecting to
die, that you have such ideas--isn't it? don't you think so? You'll stop
feeling so as soon as you're well again--won't you?"

"Perhaps," said Sophie, with, it may be, a particle of satire in her
smile.

They now got up from the rock and began