aightening the stiffening limbs, she
knelt down before it and buried her face in her hands.

"_The good are not happy, and the happy are not good_"--was she then
good because she was so miserable? Ah no! Or was this wretchedness a
wicked thing? Again, surely not!

As she lay thus, crushed and beaten down, her form contorted with sobs,
a quiet footstep roused her, and, raising her eyes, she saw the Prince
through her blinding tears. He was standing by the table, near the head
of the child. His face was very pale, and the eyes had lost the
habitual languor of their expression, and were full of an earnest
tender grief. The Princess rose, and they looked each other straight in
the eyes. Through the mist of tears the Prince's form became refined and
purified, and he stood there with a beauty hitherto altogether unknown,
even to her.

"I told this child, Isoline," he said; "I told this child that I had
done well to send for him."

"Ferdinand," she said again, "it is not you who have done this; it is
I." She stopped for a moment to recover control, and went on more
passionately--"I, who pretended to the devoted life! in which alone he
could breathe; I, to whom he looked for help and strength; I, who
deserted him and gave a false report of the promised land."

The Prince looked at her with eyes full of compassion, but did not
reply.

"You did what you could," continued his sister; "your effort was surely
a noble one. More, in fact; you came to the help of his faith against
evil. It is always so! The children of the world act always better than
the children of light!"

In her self-abasement and despair the Princess did not remember Mark's
words, that the greatest trial of his faith had been the Prince: a
tolerance which is kindly and even appreciative, and yet, as with a
clearness of a farther insight stands indifferently aside, must always
be the great trial of simple faith.

"It is easier, Isoline," said her brother at last, "to maintain a low
standard than a high. It seems to me that we have both been wrong, but
yours is the nobler fault. You attempted an impossible flight--a flight
which human nature has no wings strong enough to achieve. As for me,
this has been a terrible shock--more than I could have thought possible,
I who fancied myself so secure and so serene. That such a terrible
chance could happen shows how unstable are the most finished schemes of
life. I fancied that my life was an art, and I dreamed tha