ew how keenly you could suffer. But I
knew, too, how brave you were----"

"Oh!" she said, catching the lace at her throat. "If he--if my baby
had lived--I might--I could----"

She checked herself with a sudden biting of the lip, but the tears
broke from her eyelids and she bowed her face.

"Ah," said the man, "I know--this is very hard; but it is something,
after all, to have felt--to have known. No loss can be so bitter as a
lack--a need."

There was a moment's silence between them.

"Tell me of yourself," she said, quietly, at length.

"There is little to tell. My life is very much the same. I have
neither wife nor child. Until a man finds those, he's a most
indifferent topic."

"You have never married?" she asked.

"No. Your life is, fuller, sweeter, better. Tell me of that. I used to
know your husband--did you know?"

"No," she said, "I did not know."

"Yes, we were chaps together, he and I, the same age, though he seemed
older--he was a plucky little fellow--you did not know him long, I
believe, before you married."

She was looking straight before her at the still fountain. "No," she
said, "I did not know him long."

"Ah," mused the man, "I know him well. He is a prince--one of God's
own. Somewhat quiet now, I find, but he was always rather reserved,
his life made him so; he was such a kid when he began to support them
all--the mother and the girls, you know. But he worked along, going to
night school--always ready, always courageous. My father used to say
he'd give all his four boys for that one. We never worked much, you
know. I suppose those who don't know him call him stern, but he has
carried a pretty heavy load all his life, and that sobers a man and
takes the spring out of him--of course you know, though."

But the woman said nothing. The man paused, regarding her a moment,
then he let his gaze follow hers.

"I was thinking of the fountain," she said; "how it once flashed and
sang and played--and now----"

"And now," said the man, "it is silent and cold--but the bright water
is there still, and when the spring comes back it will leap forth
again. It reminds me of my friend of whom we were just speaking--your
husband. All the glow and life are still in his heart, and you will
waken them. I said when you were married, that he needed just that--a
union with a rich, sunny nature like your own, to teach him all that
he had missed, and give back to him all that he had lost."

Her, lashes fel