nk there is little
making up in all that for her, while Rosamond Kincaid is happy in
her new home, and Ruth and Dakie Thayne are looking out together
over the world,--which can be nowhere wholly sad to them, since they
are to go down into it together,--and planning how to make long arms
with their wealth, to reach the largest neighborhood they can? In
the first place, do you know how full the world is, all around you,
of things that are missed by those who say nothing, but go on living
somehow without them? Do you know how large a part of life, even
young life, is made of the days that have never been lived? Do you
guess how many girls, like Desire, come near something that they
think they might have had, and then see it drift by just beyond
their reach, to fall easily into some other hand that seems hardly
put out to grasp it?

And do you see, or feel, or guess how life goes on, incompleteness
and all, and things settle themselves one way, if not another,
simply because the world does not stop, but keeps turning, and
tossing off days and nights like time-bubbles just the same?

Do you ever imagine how different this winter's parties are from
last, or this summer's visit or journey from those of the summer
gone,--to many a maiden who has her wardrobe made up all the same,
and takes her German or her music lessons, and goes in and out, and
has her ticket to the Symphony Concerts, and is no different to look
at, unless perhaps with a little of the first color-freshness gone
out of her face,--while secretly it seems to her as if the sweet
early symphony of her life were all played out, and had ended in a
discord?

We begin, most of us, much as we are to go on. Real or mistaken, the
experiences of eighteen initiate the lesson that those of two and
three score after years are needed to unfold and complete. What is
left of us is continually turning round, perforce, to take up with
what is left of the world, and make the best of it.

Thus much for what does happen, for what we have to put up with, for
the mere philosophy of endurance, and the possibility of things
being endured. We do live out our years, and get and bear it all.
And the scars do not show much outside; nay, even we ourselves can
lay a finger on the place, after a little time, without a cringe.

Desire Ledwith did what she had to do; there was a way made for her,
and there was still life left.

But there is a better reading of the riddle. There is never