ell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne or
Christopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was getting
old, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth and
freshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had not
come across her path in those dear old days when she was still young
enough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever.

"The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things that
never come at all," she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there is
no such word as "too late" in God's Vocabulary.

At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar.
Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead;
they can only take such goods as the gods choose to provide, and make
the best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they are
waiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that they
extract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him to
come and see her the following day; and then she sat down and wondered
why women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actual
is to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbled
streets are all very well in their way; but they make but dreary
dwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where the
walls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. "If one is doomed to live
always on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think too
much about the life on the other side," Elisabeth reasoned with herself,
"and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not help
wondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and to
believe in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true,
but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury all
my dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have any
stone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is."

Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green with
tears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten.
We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies in
consecrated ground--that is reserved for what has once existed, and so
has the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find no
sepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must it
return.

After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Ce