uation. She tried to divert her fancy to the
channels of her daily life. She decided what colts should be broken
next summer. She devised a new plan for keeping Bob employed and happy
when the dull days of winter should come. She endeavored to be grateful
that her grandmother was less harassed by pain than usual. Yet through
all wreathed the insistent cry, "Face it. You must face it."

That compelling threat she knows who recognizes that the one dearest to
her on earth must die. It commands the scrutiny of facts, and an end to
the glossing of truth. It rings the knell of hope. Later comes the
sustaining reflection of the future life,--its opportunities for work
and its attendant happiness for him who enters upon it. But now is
self's confrontment with loneliness, with sorrow, with despair.

The cry became insistent in Sydney's ears. Face it she must.

She stepped through the long window upon the balcony which commanded
west and south. The moon swam cold in the steel-blue sky. The ribbon of
low-lying mist betrayed the devious winding of the creek. On the
horizon swung the gray masses of the mountains, their hardness veiled
in the tender light of distance. Sydney fell on her knees and twisted
her hands one within the other. She spoke in a whisper.

"I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! Oh, I cannot bear it!" she
repeated over and over.

Then stung to openness by the lash of the constant inward cry--

"I love him! Oh, I love him! Oh, I cannot bear it!" she moaned yet
again.

She rocked to and fro upon her knees, and hid her face in her hands to
shut out the glory of beauty and calm that lay before and around her.

"I never thought that love would be like this. To feel it--to be sure
of it--and to have to give him to another woman!" She began to cry
weakly.

The moon flooded the gallery with its light. A diamond on one of
Sydney's clasped hands winked as gayly as if a tragedy were not filling
the girl's heart. Then oft-read words came to her lips:

"Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing more courageous, nothing higher;
nothing wider, nothing more pleasant; nothing fuller nor better in
heaven and earth."

"For it carries a burden which is no burden, and makes everything that
is bitter sweet and savory."

"He that loveth flieth, runneth and rejoiceth; he is free and is not
bound."

"He giveth all for all."

"He giveth all for all." She repeated it again and again.

She had, indeed, dreamed of a love for whic