row to lose all one's
relatives. It needs only that three should die, my father and mother and
my brother,--only three, and two are already old,--and I should have no
relatives myself; but if one is left without relatives, there are always
friends, thank God!' And he looked at me,--he never looks at one, you
know; but he looked at me then as if I had done a sin to speak the word,
and he said, 'I have no friends. They are all dead too,' and then went
away! Oh, brother, why cannot we win him out of this grief? We can be
good friends to him; can you not find out for me what it is?"

It was a cruel weapon to use, but on the instant John made up his mind
to use it. It might spare Carlen grief, in the end.

"I have thought," he said, "that it might be for a dead sweetheart he
mourned thus. There are men, you know, who love that way and never smile
again."

Short-sighted John, to have dreamed that he could forestall any
conjecture in the girl's heart!

"I have thought of that," she answered meekly; "it would seem as if it
could be nothing else. But, John, if she be really dead--" Carlen did
not finish the sentence; it was not necessary.

After a silence she spoke again: "Dear John, if you could be more
friendly with him I think it might be different. He is your age. Father
and mother are too old, and to me he will not speak." She sighed deeply
as she spoke these last words, and went on: "Of course, if it is for a
dead sweetheart that he is grieving thus, it is only natural that the
sight of women should be to him worse than the sight of men. But it is
very seldom, John, that a man will mourn his whole life for a
sweetheart; is it not, John? Why, men marry again, almost always, even
when it is a wife that they have lost; and a sweetheart is not so much
as a wife."

"I have heard," said the pitiless John, "that a man is quicker healed of
grief for a wife than for one he had thought to wed, but lost."

"You are a man," said Carlen. "You can tell if that would be true."

"No, I cannot," he answered, "for I have loved no woman but you, my
sister; and on my word I think I will be in no haste to, either. It
brings misery, it seems to me."

If Carlen had spoken her thought at these words, she would have said,
"Yes, it brings misery; but even so it is better than joy." But Carlen
was ashamed; afraid also. She had passed now into a new life, whither
her brother, she perceived, could not follow. She could barely reach
his hand