eed it was her
father of whom she was thinking.

She made no answer. He turned toward her in anxiety. She was struggling
with emotion. The next instant the tears gushed into her eyes, while a
smile seemed to struggle from her lips, and spread a little way over her
face. It was inexpressibly touching.

"He was my friend," she said. "I shall never have such love again."

"All is not lost when much is lost," said the doctor, with sad comfort.
"There are spring days in winter."

"And _you_ don't like poetry!" she said, a sweet playful scorn shining
through her tears.

"I spoke but a sober truth," he returned; "--so sober that it seems but
the sadder for its truth. The struggle of life is to make the best of
things that might be worse."

She looked at him pitifully. For a moment her lips parted, then a
strange look as of sudden bodily pain crossed her face, her lips closed,
and her mouth looked as if it were locked. She shut the book which lay
upon her knee, and resumed her needlework. A shadow settled upon her
face.

"What a pity such a woman should be wasted in believing lies!" thought
the doctor. "How much better it would be if she would look things in the
face, and resolve to live as she can, doing her best and enduring her
worst, and waiting for the end! And yet, seeing color is not the thing
itself, and only in the brain whose eye looks upon it, why should I
think it better? why should she not shine in the color of her fancy? why
should she grow gray because the color is only in herself? We are but
bubbles flying from the round of Nature's mill-wheel. Our joys and
griefs are the colors that play upon the bubbles. Their throbs and
ripples and changes are our music and poetry, and their bursting is our
endless repose. Let us waver and float and shine in the sun; let us bear
pitifully and be kind; for the night cometh, and there an end."

But in the sad silence, he and the lady were perhaps drifting further
and further apart!

"I did not mean," he said, plunging into what came first, "that I could
not enjoy verse of the kind you prefer--as verse. I took the matter by
the more serious handle, because, evidently, you accepted the tone and
the scope of it. I have a weakness for honesty."

"There is something not right about you, though, Mr. Faber--if I could
find it out," said Miss Meredith. "You can not mean you enjoy any thing
you do not believe in?"

"Surely there are many things one can enjoy without believ