s of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not
trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought
against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she
had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a
supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and
before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at
that moment of intensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had
made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to
her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling--a deep, sincere
thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from
the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have
feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she
knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that
any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from
the one woman he loved--loved to the pitch of madness.

And then--in one moment--the strange tidings came which drove her from
the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any
she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror
swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the
thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How
would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could
not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can
think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation,
the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and
unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The
fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to
know that although she might have, after all, a certain right now to
offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never
hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken
broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured
herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours--he absorbed
in his own sorrowful thoughts, she striving vainly to distract him by a
tinkling prattle on every topic except the one nearest his heart. Oh,
how fearfully wide asunder they were! A sensation of the enormous
distance which can exist between two souls in daily companionship filled
her with a