Endurable?"

"She is helping the children; I am grateful to her," replied Anne's
voice, mechanically.

"Which means that she is worse than ever. What a dead-alive voice you
said it in! Now that I am here, I will do battle for you, Crystal, never
fear. I must go. You shall see my triumphal entrance to-morrow at
breakfast. Our rooms are not far from yours. Good-night."

She was gone. The door was closed. Anne was alone.

CHAPTER XVI.

"You who keep account
Of crisis and transition in this life,
Set down the first time Nature says plain 'no'
To some 'yes' in you, and walks over you
In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin
By singing with the birds, and running fast
With June days hand in hand; but, once for all,
The birds must sing against us, and the sun
Strike down upon us like a friend's sword, caught
By an enemy to slay us, while we read
The dear name on the blade which bites at us."

--ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

It is easy for the young to be happy before the deep feelings of the
heart have been stirred. It is easy to be good when there has been no
strong temptation to be evil; easy to be unselfish when nothing is
ardently craved; easy to be faithful when faithfulness does not tear the
soul out of its abiding-place. Some persons pass through all of life
without strong temptations; not having deep feelings, they are likewise
exempt from deep sins. These pass for saints. But when one thinks of the
cause of their faultlessness, one understands perhaps better the meaning
of those words, otherwise mysterious, that "joy shall be in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons,
which need no repentance."

Anne went through that night her first real torture; heretofore she had
felt only grief--a very different pain.

Being a woman, her first feeling, even before the consciousness of what
it meant, was jealousy. What did Helen mean by speaking of him as though
he belonged to her? She had never spoken in that way before. Although
she--Anne--had mistaken the fictitious titles, still, even under the
title, there had been no such open appropriation of the Knight-errant.
What did she mean? And then into this burning jealous anger came the
low-voiced question, asked somewhere down in the depths of her being, as
though a judge was speaking, "What--is--it--to--you?" And again, "What
is it to you?" She buried he