's voice slightly faltered--"God will cause them to meet in the next
existence. They cannot be parted--they belong to one another."

All were silent--these three women--one to whom love must have been
only a name; the other who spoke of it quietly, seriously, as we talk
of things belonging to the world to come; and the third, who sat
thoughtful, wondering, doubting, afraid to believe in a truth which
brought with it her own condemnation.

"You talk, Miss Valery, as people do in books. Some would call it
romance."

"Would they? And do you?"

"Not quite. I used to think the same sometimes; but perfect love, like
perfect beauty, is a thing one never meets with in real life."

"Yet one does not the less believe in it, and desire to find
approximations thereto. No, my child, I do not talk romance, I am too
old for that, and have seen too much of the world. Nevertheless, despite
all I have seen--the false, foolish, weak attachments--the unholy
marriages--the after-life of marriage made unholier still by struggling
against what was inevitable--still I believe in the one true love which
binds a woman's heart faithfully to one man in this life and, God grant
it! in the next. But you have no need to hear all this--little wife? You
do not wish to be taught how to love Nathanael?"

Agatha tried to smile--to conceal the pain rising in her heart.

"Come then, I will teach you how to love him--in better words than
mine, and from a woman who, though writing out of the deep truth of her
poet-heart, would scorn to write mere 'romance.'"

"Any woman would," answered Agatha, running her eyes over a book
which Miss Valery had lifted from the silk coverlid, and which "poor
Elizabeth" looked after fondly, as sick people do after the face of a
friend.

"Listen, with your heart open. It is sure to find entrance there," said
Anne, merrily, until, turning over the pages, she grew serious. She was
not quite too old to be insensible to the glamour of poetry. Her voice
was hardly like itself--at least, not like what Agatha had ever heard
it--when she began to read:

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth,
and breadth, and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every
day's Most quiet need; by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as
men strive for right: I love thee purely, as they turn from praise:
I love thee with the passio