ious of their misery, so miserable were they: like
the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," who, when his deliverers came,
was quiet indifferent, for he says:

"It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be:
I had learned to love Despair."'

'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And
it is tlue, it seems tlue:--they had learned to love Despair, to be even
ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel _sure_ flom what I have lead,
flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to
live light, but without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is
so pletty of them all! that they meant well--everly one. But they were
too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all.
Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I
can't desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so
lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.'

'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very
beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was
great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....'

'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some
_cause!_ We can be quite _sure_ that it was not natulal, because you and
I are men, and our hearts are not evil.'

This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she
found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said:

'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing,
Leda.'

The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain
moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel,
very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered:

'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the
very least: and I know yours, too.'

'You know _mine!_' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise.

'Quite well,' says she.

I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but
going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line,
which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows.

After a ten-minutes I spoke again:

'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me
what is in it!'

Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said,
speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that