as unphilosophized and incomplete, without any
just claim to being.

Lily had returned to her sister's household, but though she came home in
the heyday of her young beauty, she failed somehow to take up the story
of her life just where she had left it in Patmos. On the way home she
had refused an offer in London, and shortly after her arrival in America
she received a letter from a young gentleman whom she had casually seen
in Geneva, and who had found exile insupportable since parting with her,
and was ready to return to his native land at her bidding; but she said
nothing of these proposals till long afterwards to Professor Elmore,
who, she said, had suffered enough from her offers. She went to all the
parties and picnics, and had abundant opportunities of flirtation and
marriage; but she neither flirted nor married. She seemed to have
greatly sobered; and the sound sense which she had always shown became
more and more qualified with a thoughtful sweetness. At first, the
relation between her and the Elmores lost something of its intimacy; but
when, after several years, her health gave way, a familiarity, even
kinder than before, grew up. She used to like to come to them, and talk
and laugh fondly over their old Venetian days. But often she sat
pensive and absent, in the midst of these memories, and looked at Elmore
with a regard which he found hard to bear: a gentle, unconscious wonder
it seemed, in which he imagined a shade of tender reproach.

When she recovered her health, after a journey to the West one winter,
they saw that, by some subtile and indefinable difference, she was no
longer a young girl. Perhaps it was because they had not met her for
half a year. But perhaps it was age,--she was now thirty. However it
was, Elmore recognized with a pang that the first youth at least had
gone out of her voice and eyes. She only returned to arrange for a long
sojourn in the West. She liked the climate and the people, she said; and
she seemed well and happy. She had planned starting a Kindergarten
school in Omaha with another young lady; she said that she wanted
something to do. "She will end by marrying one of those Western
widowers," said Mrs. Elmore.

"I wonder she didn't take poor old Hoskins," mused Elmore aloud.

"No, you don't, dear," said his wife, who had not grown less direct in
dealing with him. "You know it would have been ridiculous; besides, she
never cared anything for him,--she couldn't. You might as