ls with a pensiveness which became her
better than mirth.

"'So,' she sighed, 'all our little romances come to an end!'

"'Not so,' I said; 'or if one romance ends, it is to give place to
another, still truer and sweeter. Our lives may be all a succession of
romances, if we will make them so. I think now I will never doubt the
future; for I find, that, when I have given up my dearest hopes, my
best-beloved friends, and accepted the gloomy belief that all life
besides is barren,--then comes some new experience, filling my empty
cup with a still more delicious wine.'

"'Don't vex me with your philosophy!' said Flora. 'I don't know
anything about it. All I know is this present,--this sky, this earth,
this sea, and the joy between, which I can't give up quite so easily
as you can, with your beautiful theory, that something better awaits
you.'

"'I have told you,' I replied,--for I had been quite frank with
her,--'how I left America,--what a blank life was to me then; and did
I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest
happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith
in the divinity that shapes our ends?'

"'And so,' she answered, 'when I have lost you, I shall have the
satisfaction of thinking that you are enjoying some still more
exquisite consolation for the slight pangs you may have felt at
parting from me! Your philosophy will make it easy for you to say,
"Good-bye! it was a pretty romance; I go to find prettier ones
still"; and then forget me altogether!'

"'And you,' I said, 'will that be easy for you?'

"'Yes,' she cried, with spirit,--'anything is easy to a proud,
impetuous woman, who finds that the brief romance of a ten-days'
acquaintance has already become tiresome to the second party. I am
glad I have enjoyed what I have; that is so much gain, of which you
cannot rob me; and now I can say good-bye as coolly as you, or I can
die of shame, or I can at once walk over this single rail into the
water, and quench this little candle, and so an end!'

"She sprang upon a bench, and, I swear to you, I thought she was going
down! I was so exalted by this passionate demonstration, that I should
certainly have gone over with her, and felt perfectly content to die
in her arms,--at least, until I began to realize what a very
disagreeable bath we had chosen to drown in.

"I drew her away; I walked up and down with that superb creature
panting and palpitating almost upon m