y, a look of simple
affectionateness chasing away the other. "It is good to think that
there was any one, in all that great crowd of people, who cared so much
about me, but, my good little friend, never trouble yourself with that
thought in connection with me again. My heart is dead--so dead that it
seem weary waiting for the rest of me to die, and nothing but the
resurrection morning that renews it all can ever give me back the heart
I had before I was married. It did not die suddenly at one blow, but
it died a lingering death of slow, slow pain. Think what it is! I am
younger than you, and already joy and pleasure and hope are words that
have no meaning for me. Oh, poor Hannah! I oughtn't to make you cry,
and yet your tears are blessed things. When I could cry I was not so
wretched."

She leaned toward the girl and clasped her close, kissing the teardrops
from each eye and soothing her, as if hers had been the sorrow.

"I want to be just to my husband," she went on presently. "I do believe
he is not to blame. He gives me all he has to give, but there is
nothing! Oh, when I look into my heart and see its power of suffering,
and see, too, how marvellously happy I might once have been, I seem a
thousand worlds away from him--my husband, who ought to be the very
closest, nearest, likest thing to me! Perhaps he is not happy, but at
least he does not suffer, and he is always contented to live on as we
are--no work, no friends, no ambition, no interest in life, except mere
living. Oh, but it is hard! How long will it go on so, Hannah?" she
broke out suddenly, with a ring of fervor in her voice. "Did you ever
hear of any one living on and on and on, in a life like this? Could it
go on until one got old and deaf and wrinkled, and can anything end it
but death? It seems so impossible that I can be the little Christine who
used to sit and dream of happiness in marriage, and of the handsome
lover who would come some day and carry me off to a beautiful land where
all my dreams would be realized. I came out on that stage to-night," she
went on, sitting upright and folding her beautiful arms, "and while the
people were looking at me and clapping, a thought came to me that made
me feel like sobbing. I wondered in my soul how many broken hearts were
covered by those lace and velvet garments, and those smiling,
superficial faces. The thought absorbed me so that I forgot everything
and the prompter thought I'd forgotten my part entirel