rst--that there is light beyond, though at first you may not be able
to see it. Try to keep that in your mind if you can."

She had given him her hand and they clasped the cross between them. All
the time that he was speaking she looked at him with a calm and
unbelieving wonder in her large eyes. As he paused she shook her head
with grave incredulousness and said quietly:

"You do not know me, Mr. Noel. I thought you understood a little, but
you are wrong if you think there is anything you could tell me for which
I should care so much. I do not suppose I could make you understand it,
but my heart is dead and buried in my baby's grave, and nothing could
make me feel as you expect me to feel. The two or three people that
I--know" (Noel knew by the pause she made that she had wanted to say
love, but couldn't, in honesty, use the word) "are all well. I have just
come from them--even Dr. Belford I have seen to-day--but if you were
going to tell me they were all dead I could not care a great deal--at
least not in the way you expect me to care--for what you have to tell
me. It may be wicked to have so hard a heart, but I cannot help it.
There is absolutely nothing in all the world that could make me feel in
the way you think I ought to feel at what you have to tell me."

"I did not say ought," said Noel, "there is no ought about it. It is a
thing inevitable. Oh, Christine, there is no way to lead up to it. I
must just tell you and beg you, for my sake at least, to try to bear
it."

"You had better tell me," she said. "You will see how I can bear it."

The calm security of her tones, the passionless wonder of her quiet
face were almost maddening. They made him fear the more the effect of
the shock when it should come.

"Christine," he said quietly, though his heart was leaping, "it is
something about your--about the man you married."

A faint flush came up in her face, and she averted her eyes an instant.
Then she looked at him and said calmly:

"I thought you knew that long ago that became one of the subjects upon
which I had ceased to feel deeply. If you think it is wrong of me to say
this I cannot help it. He hated his little child. He never thought it
anything but a trouble and a burden, and he was not sorry when it died.
He is glad the trouble of it is over. He had long ceased to feel any
love for me--if he ever had it--but if he had cared a little for the
poor little baby I could have forgotten that; but he was cr