course I won't. But I must go and get you something to eat."

"I could not swallow a mouthful; it would choke me. And where would be
the good of it, when life is over!"

"Don't talk like that, dear. Life can't be over till it is taken from
us."

"Ah, you would see it just as I do, if you knew all!"

"Tell me all, then."

"Where is the use, when there is no help?"

"No help!" echoed Dorothy.--The words she had so often uttered in her
own heart, coming from the lips of another, carried in them an
incredible contradiction.--Could God make or the world breed the
irreparable?--"Juliet," she went on, after a little pause, "I have often
said the same myself, but--"

"You!" interrupted Juliet; "you who always professed to believe!"

Dorothy's ear could not distinguish whether the tone was of indignation
or of bitterness.

"You never heard me, Juliet," she answered, "profess any thing. If my
surroundings did so for me, I could not help that. I never dared say I
believed any thing. But I hope--and, perhaps," she went on with a smile,
"seeing Hope is own sister to Faith, she may bring me to know her too
some day. Paul says----"

Dorothy had been brought up a dissenter, and never said _St._ this one
or that, any more than the Christians of the New Testament.

At the sound of the name, Juliet burst into tears, the first she shed,
for the word _Paul_, like the head of the javelin torn from the wound,
brought the whole fountain after it. She cast herself down again, and
lay and wept. Dorothy kneeled beside her, and laid a hand on her
shoulder. It was the only way she could reach her at all.

"You see," she said at last, for the weeping went on and on, "there is
nothing will do you any good but your husband."

"No, no; he has cast me from him forever!" she cried, in a strange wail
that rose to a shriek.

"The wretch!" exclaimed Dorothy, clenching a fist whose little bones
looked fierce through the whitened skin.

"No," returned Juliet, suddenly calmed, in a voice almost severe; "it is
I who am the wretch, to give you a moment in which to blame him. He has
done nothing but what is right."

"I don't believe it."

"I deserved it."

"I am sure you did not. I would believe a thousand things against him
before I would believe one against you, my poor white queen!" cried
Dorothy, kissing her hand.

She snatched it away, and covered her face with both hands.

"I should only need to tell you one thing to convince you,