too, that, with
the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so
eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done
more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labor of
a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there
lay in this coming labor any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it
desperately, as if this should banish, it might be, worse loss. She
tried desperately, I say, to clutch the far, uncertain hope at the end,
to make happiness out of it, to give it to her silent hungry heart to
feed on. She thrust out of sight all possible life that might have
called her true self into being, and clung to this present shallow duty
and shallow reward. Pitiful and vain so to cling! It is the way of
women. As if any human soul could bury that which might have been in
that which is!

The Doctor, peering into her thought with sharp, suspicious eyes, heeded
the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the pleasant cheery
talk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew. The woman
he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold. It was
only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths of solitude
her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy touched
him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who had
held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the kingly
power in his hand to break its silence into electric shivers of laughter
and tears,--terrible subtle pain, or joy as terrible. Did he hold the
power still, he wondered? Meanwhile she sat there quiet, unread.

The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought,
impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into
the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening
gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The quiet,
wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into silence and
thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog,
that filled the valleys like restless vapor curdled into silence; quiet
in the listening air, stretching gray up to the stars,--in the solemn
mountains, that stood motionless, like hoary-headed prophets, waiting
with uplifted hands, day and night, to hear the Voice, silent now
for centuries; the very air, heavy with the breath of the sleeping
pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like