the invalid lay
down, and turned towards the crowd a white, suffering face, which was
yet so heavenly meek and peaceful that it comforted whoever looked at
it.

In spirit our happy friends bowed themselves before it and owned that
there was something better than happiness in it.

"What is it like, Isabel?"

"O, I don't know, darling," she said; but she thought, "Perhaps it is
like some blessed sorrow that takes us out of this prison of a world,
and sets us free of our every-day hates and desires, our aims, our
fears, ourselves. Maybe a long and mortal sickness might come to wear
such a face in one of us two, and the other could see it, and not regret
the poor mask of youth and pretty looks that had fallen away."

She rose and went over to the sick woman, on whose face beamed a tender
smile, as Isabel spoke to her. A chord thrilled in two lives hitherto
unknown to each other; but what was said Basil would not ask when the
invalid had taken Isabel's hand between her own, as for adieu, and she
came back to his side with swimming eyes. Perhaps his wife could have
given no good reason for her emotion, if he had asked it. But it made
her very sweet and dear to him; and I suppose that when a tolerably
unselfish man is once secure of a woman's love, he is ordinarily more
affected by her compassion and tenderness for other objects than by her
feelings towards himself. He likes well enough to think, "She loves me,"
but still better, "How kind and good she is!"

They lost sight of the invalid in the hurry of getting places on the
cars, and they never saw her again. The man at the wicket-gate leading
to the train had thrown it up, and the people were pressing furiously
through as if their lives hung upon the chance of instant passage. Basil
had secured his ticket for the sleeping-car, and so he and Isabel
stood aside and watched the tumult. When the rash was over they passed
through, and as they walked up and down the platform beside the train,
"I was thinking," said Isabel, "after I spoke to that poor old lady,
of what Clara Williams says: that she wonders the happiest women in the
world can look each other in the face without bursting into tears, their
happiness is so unreasonable, and so built upon and hedged about with
misery. She declares that there's nothing so sad to her as a bride,
unless it's a young mother, or a little girl growing up in the innocent
gayety of her heart. She wonders they can live through it."

"Cl