uiet heart to those marvellous riddles within us
and without, which we cease to conjecture when experience has taught us
that they have no solution upon this side the grave. Lured by the light,
the child rose softly, approached the window, and, resting her upturned
face upon both hands, gazed long into the heavens, communing evidently
with herself, for her lips moved and murmured indistinctly. Slowly she
retired from the casement, and again seated herself at the foot of the
bed, disconsolate. And then her thoughts ran somewhat thus, though she
might not have shaped them exactly in the same words: "No, I cannot
understand it. Why was I contented and happy before I knew him? Why did
I see no harm, no shame in this way of life--not even on that stage with
those people--until he said, 'It was what he wished I had never stooped
to'? And Grandfather says our paths are so different they cannot cross
each other again. There is a path of life, then, which I can never
enter; there is a path on which I must always, always walk, always,
always, always that path,--no escape! Never to come into that other one
where there is no disguise, no hiding, no false names,--never, never!"
she started impatiently, and with a wild look,--"It is killing me!"

Then, terrified by her own impetuosity, she threw herself on the bed,
weeping low. Her heart had now gone back to her grandfather; it was
smiting her for ingratitude to him. Could there be shame or wrong in
what he asked,--what he did? And was she to murmur if she aided him to
exist? What was the opinion of a stranger boy compared to the approving
sheltering love of her sole guardian and tried fostering friend? And
could people choose their own callings and modes of life? If one road
went this way, another that, and they on the one road were borne farther
and farther away from those on the other--as that idea came, consolation
stopped, and in her noiseless weeping there was a bitterness as of
despair. But the tears ended by relieving the grief that caused them.
Wearied out of conjecture and complaint, her mind relapsed into the
old native, childish submission. With a fervour in which there was
self-reproach she repeated her meek, nightly prayer, that God would
bless her dear grandfather, and suffer her to be his comfort and
support. Then mechanically she undressed, extinguished the candle, and
crept into bed. The moonlight became bolder and bolder; it advanced tip
the floors, along the walls;