arting, and understood how impossible happiness would be for her, with
Paul away, on naval or military duty, more than half their lives, and
for periods of two, three, or five years; and after that she never said
another word in favor of his wearing Uncle Sam's livery, although she
had often expressed a wish that he should enter the army.

Miriam's affection for Paul was so profound and quiet, that she did not
know its depth or strength. As she had not believed that parting from
him would be painful until the event had taught her, so even now she did
not know how intertwined with every chord and fibre of her heart and how
identical with her life, was her love for Paul. She was occupied by a
more enthusiastic devotion to her "brother," as she called her guardian.

The mysterious sorrow, the incurable melancholy of a man like Thurston
Willcoxen, could not but invest him with peculiar interest and even
strange fascination for one of Miriam's enthusiastic, earnest
temperament. She loved him with more than a daughter's love; she loved
him with all the impassioned earnestness of her nature; her heart
yearned as it would break with its wild, intense longing to do him some
good, to cure his sorrow, to make him happy. There were moments when but
for the sweet shyness that is ever the attendant and conservator of such
pure feeling, this wild desire was strong enough to cast her at his
feet, to embrace his knees, and with tears beseech him to let her into
that dark, sorrowful bosom, to see if she could make any light and joy
there. She feared that he had sinned, that his incurable sorrow was the
gnawing tooth of that worm that never dieth, preying on his heart; but
she doubted, too, for what could he have done to plunge his soul in such
a hell of remorse? He commit a crime? Impossible! the thought was
treason; a sin to be repented of and expiated. His fame was fairest of
the fair, his name most honored among the, honorable. If not remorse,
what then was the nature of his life-long sorrow? Many, many times she
revolved this question in her mind. And as she matured in thought and
affection, the question grew more earnest and importunate. Oh, that he
would unburden his heart to her; oh! that she might share and alleviate
his griefs. If "all earnest desires are prayers," then prayer was
Miriam's "vital breath and native air" indeed; her soul earnestly
desired, prayed, to be able to give her sorrowing brother peace.

CHAPTER XXX