thy
as he is, till time has tamed and experience developed him. Even then
the risk is great, for he demands and unconsciously absorbs into himself
the personality of others, making large returns, but of a kind which
only those as strong, sagacious, and steadfast as himself can receive
and adapt to their individual uses, without being overcome and
possessed. That none of us should be, except by the Spirit stronger than
man, purer than woman. You feel, though you do not understand this
power. You know that his presence excites, yet wearies you; that, while
you love, you fear him, and even when you long to be all in all to him,
you doubt your ability to make his happiness. Am I not right?"

"I must say, yes."

"Then, it is scarcely necessary for me to tell you that I think this
unequal marriage would be but a brief one for you; bright at its
beginning, dark at its end. With him you would exhaust yourself in
passionate endeavors to follow where he led. He would not know this, you
would not confess it, but too late you might both learn that you were
too young, too ardent, too frail in all but the might of love, to be his
wife. It is like a woodbird mating with an eagle, straining its little
wings to scale the sky with him, blinding itself with gazing at the sun,
striving to fill and warm the wild eyrie which becomes its home, and
perishing in the stern solitude the other loves. Yet, too fond and
faithful to regret the safer nest among the grass, the gentler mate it
might have had, the summer life and winter flitting to the south for
which it was designed."

"Faith, you frighten me; you seem to see and show me all the dim
forebodings I have hidden away within myself, because I could not
understand or dared not face them. How have you learned so much? How can
you read me so well? and who told you these things of us all?"

"I had an unhappy girlhood in a discordant home; early cares and losses
made me old in youth, and taught me to observe how others bore their
burdens. Since then solitude has led me to study and reflect upon the
question toward which my thoughts inevitably turned. Concerning yourself
and your past Geoffrey told me much but Adam more."

"Have you seen him? Has he been here? When, Faith, when?"

Light and color flashed back into Sylvia's face, and the glad eagerness
of her voice was a pleasant sound to hear after the despairing accents
gone before. Faith sighed, but answered fully, carefully, while the
co