ly like you!"

"Like me! Oh no, Elizabeth," for Dinah's humility could ill brook this
speech.

"But it is no use--I could never reach you. I am so human--a
passionate, self-willed woman, who wants her own way in everything; and
you, oh, Die, you are miles above me. That is why I love you so--I love
you so!"

"Not more than I love you," returned her sister tenderly. "Dear
Elizabeth, it is only your generosity that makes you say this, but it
is not true. I wish I knew what has upset you so to-night." But
Elizabeth made no reply to this; the friendship between the sisters was
so perfect that speech did not always seem necessary. When Elizabeth
remained silent, Dinah did not repeat her question.

Elizabeth had seated herself on the cushioned window-seat close to
Dinah's chair. The little green lamp had been extinguished, and the
room was bathed in moon-light. Down below were the dark woodlands. "Let
me stay for a little while," Elizabeth had whispered, and then they had
both remained silent.

Dinah felt perplexed and troubled by her sister's unusual emotion.
Elizabeth's strong, healthy nature was never morbid; her temperament
was even and sunshiny, and a depressed mood was a rare thing with her.

Dinah's sweet serenity was vaguely disturbed, and the quiet tears
gathered in her eyes. Silence was good for both of them, she thought.
When one has lived through a great pain, and by God's grace has
conquered, it is better to bury the dead past. Elizabeth's passionate
incredulity, the difficulty she felt in understanding her sister's
motives, her exaggerated praise, made Dinah wince in positive pain. How
could human love misjudge her so! Did not even her nearest and
dearest--her own sister-friend--know how often she had striven and
failed and fainted under that hard cross that had been laid upon her?

And in truth few women had suffered as Dinah had in the sweet blossom
of her early womanhood, and more than once she had been very near the
gates of the dark valley whose shadow is the shadow of death.

How she had gloried in her lover--her "Douglas--Douglas, tender and
true," as she had called him to herself--in his great intellect and his
strong man's heart, in the plan and purpose of his life, with its
scientific research and its passionate love of truth!

And then that awful struggle between her affection and her sense of
right, the doubts and terrors, the wakeful nights and joyless days, the
vast blank of life that st