nking about it ever since that
day you spoke of it--you remember--and now I have talked it over with
mamma. If she can't manage, all the expense we will help. Oh Rose,' and
she came nearer again, timidly, her eyes melting, 'I know we haven't
understood each other. I have been ignorant, I think, and narrow. But I
meant it for the best, dear--I did--'

Her voice failed her, but in her look there seemed to be written the
history of all the prayers and yearnings of her youth over the pretty
wayward child who had been her joy and torment. Rose could not but meet
that look--its nobleness, its humble surrender.

Suddenly two large tears rolled down her cheeks. She dashed them away
impatiently.

'I am not a bit well,' she said, as though in irritable excuse both
to herself and Catherine. 'I believe I have had a headache for a
fortnight.'

And then she put her arms down on a table near and hid her face upon
them. She was one bundle of jarring nerves; sore, poor passionate child,
that she was betraying herself; sorer still that, as she told herself,
Catherine was sending her to Berlin as a consolation. When girls
have love-troubles the first thing their elders do is to look for a
diversion. She felt sick and humiliated. Catherine had been talking her
over with the family, she supposed.

Meanwhile Catherine stood by her tenderly, stroking her hair and saying
soothing things.

'I am sure you will be happy at Berlin, Rose. And you mustn't leave me
out of your life, dear, though I am so stupid and unmusical. You must
write to me about all you do. We must be in a new time. Oh, I feel so
guilty sometimes,' she went on, falling into a low intensity of voice
that startled Rose, and made her look hurriedly up. 'I fought against
your music, I suppose, because I thought it was devouring you--leaving
no room for--for religion--for God. I was jealous of it for Christ's
sake. And all the time I was blundering! Oh, Rose,' and she sank on her
knees beside the chair, resting her head against the girl's shoulder,
'papa charged me to make you love God, and I torture myself with
thinking that, instead, it has been my doing, my foolish, clumsy doing,
that you have come to think religion dull and hard. Oh, my darling, if
I could make amends--if I could got you not to love your art less but
to love it in God! Christ is the first reality; all things else are
real and lovely in Him! Oh, I have been frightening you away from Him!
I ought to have d