you still--perhaps a great deal of
happiness. They say that life never takes anything from us for which it
isn't prepared to give us compensation, if we'll only accept it in the
right way."

Rosie shook her head. "I don't want it."

Lois tried to reach the dulled spirit by another channel. "But we all
have disappointments and sorrows, Rosie. I have mine. I've great ones."

The aloofness in Rosie's gaze seemed to put miles between them. "That
doesn't make any difference to me. If you want me to be sorry for
them--I'm not. I can't be sorry for any one."

In her desire to touch the frozen springs of the girl's emotions, Lois
said what she would have supposed herself incapable of saying. "Not when
you know what they are?--when you know what one of them is, at any
rate!--when you know what one of them _must_ be! You're the only person
in the world except myself who can know."

Rosie's voice was as lifeless as before. "I can't be sorry. I don't know
why--but I can't be."

"Do you mean that you're glad I have to suffer?"

"N-no. I'm not glad--especially. I just--don't care."

Lois was baffled. The impenetrable iciness was more difficult to deal
with than active grief. She made her supreme appeal. "And then, Rosie,
then there's--there's God."

Rosie looked vaguely over the lake and said nothing. If she fixed her
eyes on anything, it was on the quivering balance of a kingfisher in the
air. When with a flash of silver and blue he swooped, and, without
seeming to have touched the water, went skimming away with a fish in his
bill, her eyes wandered slowly back in her companion's direction.

Lois made another attempt. "You believe in God, don't you?"

There was a second's hesitation. "I don't know as I do."

The older woman spoke with the pleading of distress. "But there _is_ a
God, Rosie."

There was the same brief hesitation. "I don't care whether there is or
not."

Though Lois could get no further, it hurt her to see the look of relief
in the little creature's face when she rose and said: "You'd rather I'd
go away, wouldn't you? Then I will go; but it won't be for long. I'm not
going to leave you to yourself. I'm coming back soon. I shall come back
again to-day. If you're not at home, I'll follow you up here."

She waited for some sign of protest, but Rosie sat silent and impassive.
Though courtesy kept her dumb, it couldn't conceal the air of resigned
impatience with which she awaited her visitor's departure.