speech? This was the nearest
approach to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb
intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute mothers
looking on their young. But, subtile as it was, it was narrow and
individual; whereas an emotion which can shape itself in language opens
the gate for itself into the great community of human affections; for
every word we speak is the medal of a dead thought or feeling, struck in
the die of some human experience, worn smooth by innumerable contacts,
and always transferred warm from one to another. By words we share the
common consciousness of the race, which has shaped itself in these
symbols. By music we reach those special states of consciousness
which, being without _form_, cannot be shaped with the mosaics of the
vocabulary. The language of the eyes runs deeper into the personal
nature, but it is purely individual, and perishes in the expression. If
we consider them all as growing out of the consciousness as their root,
language is the leaf, music is the flower; but when the eyes meet and
search each other, it is the uncovering of the blanched stem through
which the whole life runs, but which has never taken color or form from
the sunlight.

For three days Elsie did not return to the school. Much of the time she
was among the woods and rocks. The season was now beginning to wane, and
the forest to put on its autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning
to soften the landscape, and the most delicious days of the year were
lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It was not very
singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which
the change of season must soon drive her. But Old Sophy saw clearly
enough that some internal conflict was going on, and knew very well that
it must have its own way and work itself out as it best could. As much
as looks could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, to be
sure, that she could not love. Something warped and thwarted the emotion
which would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an
emotion was striving with her against all malign influences which
interfered with it the old woman had a perfect certainty in her own
mind.

Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in persons of various
temperaments knows well enough that they have periods of _incubation_,
which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and
degree of excitement, yet ev