appiness, and I could not help hoping."

"And you still wait--still hope?"

Ida made no direct answer. She gazed far off at the indistinguishable
border-land of sea and sky, and when she spoke it was in a softened
tone.

"When I was here last, I was seven years old. Now I am not quite
nineteen. How long I have lived since then--how long! Yet my life did
not really begin till I was about eleven. Till then I was a happy
child, understanding nothing. Between then and now, if I have
discovered little good either in myself or in others, I have learned by
heart everything that is bad in the world. Nothing in meanness or
vileness or wretchedness is a secret to me. Compare me with other girls
of nineteen--perhaps still at school. What sort of a companion should I
be for one of those, I wonder! What strange thoughts I should have, if
ever I talked with such a girl; how old I should feel myself beside
her!"

"Your knowledge is better in my eyes than their ignorance. My ideal
woman is the one who, knowing every darkest secret of life, keeps yet a
pure mind--as you do, Ida."

She was silent so long that Waymark spoke again.

"Your mother died when you were eleven!"

"Yes, and that was when my life began. My mother was very poor, but she
managed to send me to a pretty good school. But for that, my life would
have been very different; I should not have understood myself as well
as I always have done. Poor mother,--good, good mother! Oh, if I could
but have her now, and thank her for all her love, and give her but one
year of quiet happiness. To think that I can see her as if she were
standing before me, and yet that she is gone, is nowhere, never to be
brought back to me if I break my heart with longing!"

Tears stood in her eyes. They meant more than she could ever say to
another, however close and dear to her. The secret of her mother's life
lay in the grave and in her own mind; the one would render it up as
soon as the other. For never would Ida tell in words of that moment
when there had come to her maturing intelligence clear insight into her
mother's history, when the fables of childhood had no longer availed to
blind her, and every recalled circumstance pointed but to one miserable
truth.

"She's happier than we are," Waymark said solemnly. "Think how long she
has been resting."

Ida became silent, and presently spoke with a firmer voice.

"They took her to a hospital in her last illness, and she died there. I
d