s pride and delight and she had lined it throughout
with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history
just beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few in
town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.

Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. Seeing
Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as
though she herself were the happiest of wives.

"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she
exclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young married
people can be forgotten and pushed aside."

"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as since
I was here last."

"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun to
feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the
unhappy."

But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms
around each other, passed into the parlors.

"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate,
rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriage
home. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to
ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."

"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I
cannot stay. I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak
to you, just to tell you how much I love you."

Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes. "Is so little of me
so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a
lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.

"No, no, no," cried Isabel. "I wish we could never be separated."

She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over
the music. "It seems so long since I heard any music. What has
become of it? Has it all gone out of life? I feel as though
there were none any more."

Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another
irresolutely.

"I have not touched the piano for weeks."

She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few
chords. Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining
hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."

Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"

The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work.
She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.

"When did you see Rowan?"

"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of
defensiv