it has as much to do with flesh and blood, as an
instrument has with the music that it makes. What would become of the
music if it wasn't for the instrument?"

"That's a beautiful illustration, my dear," observed Sophie, after a
thoughtful pause, "but I think it can be used better the other way. The
music of love, like other music, is an existence by itself, exclusive of
the flesh-and-blood instruments, which weren't given us to create music,
but to interpret it to our earthly senses. Our souls are the players;
but in the next world we shall be able to perceive the harmony without
need of any medium. We can remember music, too, and enjoy it, long after
we have heard it--that is why we don't need to be always together. And
yet it's always sweet to meet, to hear a new tune; and the number of
tunes is infinite; so love needs all eternity to make itself complete."

When Sophie hit upon an idea which seemed to her spiritually beautiful
and harmonious, she was apt to be carried away--sometimes, perhaps, into
deep water. Yet thus, occasionally, did she catch glimpses of higher
truths than a broader and safer wisdom could have attained. Cornelia
took one of the glowing leaves out of her basket, and looked at it.
Perhaps she saw, in the perfect earthly self-sufficiency of its
splendor, something akin to herself.

"I suppose I don't half appreciate your theory, Sophie, though it's
certainly pretty enough. But you're more soul than body, to begin with,
I believe. For my part, I almost think, sometimes, I could get along
without any soul at all, and never feel the least inconvenience. Perhaps
everybody hasn't a soul--only a few favored ones."

"What is it gives you such thoughts, Neelie?" said her sister, in a tone
which, had it not been charged with so ranch depth of feeling, would
have been plaintive. Her gray, profound eyes, from a slight slanting
upward of the brows above them, took on an expression in harmony with
her tone. "I never knew you to have such, until lately."

"I suppose, until lately, I didn't have any thoughts at all." There was
a pause. Sophie looked away over the beautiful valley, but it could not
drive the shadow of anxious and loving sorrow from her face. Cornelia
busied herself selecting leaves from her basket, and arranging them in a
bouquet. Like them, she was more vividly and variously beautiful since
the frost.

"Do you think men's ideas of love, and such things, are as high as
women's?" asked she