nion's face. "Oh, what
am I saying!" she cried in a very different tone, "you who have done so
much--you who were always good to us--I did not indeed mean to hurt you,
it is your creed that I can't help hating, not you. You are our friend,
you said so long ago."

"Always," said Brian; "never doubt that."

"Then you must forgive me for having wounded you," said Erica, her whole
face softening. "You must remember how hard it all is, and that I am so
very, very miserable."

He would have given his life to bring her comfort, but he was not a very
great believer in words, and besides, he thought she had talked quite as
long as she ought.

"I think," he said, "that, honestly acted out, the message intrusted to
me ought to comfort your misery."

"I can't act it out," she said.

"You will begin to try," was Brian's answer; and then, with a very full
heart, he said goodbye and left his Undine sitting by the fire, with her
head resting on her hands, and the words of her mother's message echoing
in her ears. "It is only love that can keep from bitterness; love is
stronger than the world's unkindness."

Presently, not daring to dwell too much on that last scene which Brian
had described, she turned to his strange, unexpected reason for his
belief in the resurrection, and mused over the characteristics of his
ideal. Then she thought she would like to see again what her ideal man
had to say about his, and she got up and searched for a small book in
a limp red cover, labeled "Life of Jesus of Nazareth--Luke Raeburn." It
was more than two years since she had seen it; she read it through once
more. The style was vigorous, the veiled sarcasms were not unpleasant
to her, she detected no unfairness in the mode of treatment, the book
satisfied her, the conclusion arrived at seemed to her inevitable--Brian
Osmond's ideal was not perfect.

With a sigh of utter weariness she shut the book and leaned back in her
chair with a still, white, hopeless face. Presently Friskarina sprung up
on her knee with a little sympathetic mew; she had been too miserable
as yet to notice even her favorite cat very much, now a scarcely
perceptible shade of relief came to her sadness, she stroked the soft
gray head. But scarcely had she spoken to her favorite, when the cat
suddenly turned away, sprung from her knee and trotted out of the room.
It seemed like actual desertion, and Erica could ill bear it just then.

"What, you too, Friskie," she said to h