s everything;
nothing matters except being good and going to heaven."

He smiled half sadly at her.

"Those are grave thoughts for the most brilliant beauty, the most gifted
singer, the most popular queen of the day," he said.

"The brilliant beauty will be a mere handful of dust and ashes some
day," she said.

Then Lord Chandos rose from his seat with a shudder.

"Let us go out into the sunlight," he said; "the shade under the old
cedar makes you dull. How you have changed! I can remember when you
never had a dull thought."

"I can remember when I had no cause for dull thoughts," she answered.
Then, fancying that the words implied some little reproach to him, she
continued, hastily: "My soul has grown larger, and the larger one's soul
the more one suffers. I have understood more of human nature since I
have tried to represent the woes of others."

He glanced at her with sudden interest.

"Which, of all the characters you represent, do you prefer?" he asked.

"I can hardly tell you. I like Norma very much--the stately, proud,
loving woman, who has struggled so much with her pride, with her sense
of duty, with her sacred character, who fought human love inch by inch,
who yielded at last; who made the greatest sacrifice a woman could make,
who risked her life and dearer than her life for her love. All the
passion and power in my nature rises to that character."

"That is easily seen," he replied. "There have been many Normas, but
none like you."

Her face brightened; it was so sweet to be praised by him!

"And then," she continued, "the grand tragedy of passion and despair,
the noble, queenly woman who has sacrificed everything to the man she
loves finds that she has a rival--a young, beautiful, beloved rival."
She clasped her hands with the manner of a queen. "My whole soul rises
to that," she continued; "I understand it--the passion, the anguish, the
despair!"

His dark eyes, full of admiration, were riveted on her.

"Who would have thought," he said, gravely, "that you had such a marvel
of genius in you?"

"You are very good to call it genius," she said. "I always knew I had
something in me that was not to be described or understood--something
that made me different from other people; but I never knew what it was.
Do you know those two lines:

"'The poets learn in suffering
What they tell in song.'

"I think the passion of anguish and pain taught me to interpret the pains
and joys of othe