spect for him and his wisdom in what is best, that I married him. I
thought I could love him. I always thought that if I didn't love--the
other one--I should love Norris; but I can't. I believe my power of love
is gone forever. I feel sometimes as if the best part of me had been
killed--not died of its own accord, but as if it had been murdered."

"Poor child!" I said. "Why don't you talk this over with your husband?"

"Oh, Ruth, how could I?"

"Well, may I talk to you? Will it hurt you?"

"Nothing that you would say can hurt me, dear."

"Then let me say just this. You have been trying to do in weeks what
nature would take years to do. In real life you cannot lose your love and
heal your worse than widowed heart and love anew as you would in private
theatricals. You have outraged your own delicate sensibilities, but not
with your husband's consent. He does not want you to try to love him. No
good man does. He wants you to love him because you can't help
yourself--because it seems to your heart to be the only natural thing to
do. 'When the song's gone out of your life, you can't start another while
it's a-ringing in your ears. It's best to have a bit o' silence, and out
of that maybe a psalm'll come by and by.'"

"Oh, Ruth, dear Ruth, say that again," she cried, turning towards me with
tears in her lovely eyes. I repeated it.

"How restful to dare to take 'a bit o' silence'!"

"No one can prevent you doing so but yourself. Mr. Whitehouse married you
to give you just that, confident that he loved you so much that the psalm
would come by and by."

"I believe he did," said Louise gently, with color rising in her cheeks.

"Another thing. Don't try not to grieve. Don't repress yourself. It is
right that you should mourn over your lost ideals. Nothing on earth
brings more poignant grief than that. You will never get them back. Do not
expect what is impossible. They were false ideals, none the less beautiful
and dear to you for being that, but truly they were distorted. You will
see this some time. You have begun to see it now. You realize that this
man was in no way what you thought him. You had idealized him, had almost
crowned him. Now you can't help trying to invest Mr. Whitehouse with the
same unnamable, invisible qualities. But no man has them. Your husband is
a thousand times more worthy than the other, yet even he does not deserve
worship. Let the man do the crowning if you can, although a woman of your
temper