lk and was so silent, indeed, that Dolly became silent too; and
so, as the dusk fell upon them, they sat together in a novel quiet,
listening to a band of strolling musicians, who were playing somewhere
in the distance, and the sound of whose instruments floated to them,
softened and made plaintive by the evening air.

At last Dolly broke the silence.

"You are very quiet, Phemie," she said. "Are you going to sleep?"

"No," faltered Phemie, drawing closer to her. "I am thinking."

"Thinking. What about?"

"About you. Dolly, do you--are you very ill--worse than you were?"

"Very ill!" repeated Dolly, slowly, as if in wonder. "Worse than I was!
Why do you ask?"

Then Phemie lost self-control altogether. She left her seat and fell
down by the couch, bursting into tears.

"You are so altered," she said; "and you alter so much every week. I
cried over your poor, thin little hands when first I came to see you,
but now your wrist looks as if it would snap in two. Oh, Dolly, darling,
if--if you should die!"

Was it quite a new thought, or was it because it had never come home to
her in such a form before, this thought of Death? She started as if she
had been stung.

"If I should die!" she echoed. "_Die!_"

"Phemie, my dear," said Miss MacDowlas, opening the door, "the professor
is waiting down-stairs."

And so, having let her sorrow get the better of her, Phemie had no time
to stay to see if her indiscretion had done harm. If she did not go
now, she might not be allowed fresh grace; and so she was fain to tear
herself away.

"I ought n't to have said it!" she bewailed, as she kissed Dolly again
and again. "Please forget it; oh, do, please, forget it! I did not mean
it, indeed! And now I shall be so frightened and unhappy!"

"Phemie," said Dolly, quietly, "you have not frightened _me_; so you
haven't the least need to trouble yourself, my dear."

But she was not exactly sorry to be left alone, and when she was alone
her thoughts wandered back to that first evening Phemie had called,--the
evening she had gone to the glass to look at her changed face. She had
sat in the basket-chair then,--she lay back upon her cushions now, and
a crowd of new thoughts came trooping through her mind. The soft air was
scented and balmy; the twilight sky was a dome of purple, jewel-hung;
people's voices came murmuring from the gardens below; the far-off music
floated to her through the window.

"If I should _die!_" she said, in a