th my whole strong heart and head,--
I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said,
'Look in my face and see!'

"But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart
And drowned it in life's surge.
In all your wide warm earth I have no part--
light song overcomes me like a dirge.
Could love's great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose?
Look in my face and see--

"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth

One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet--
Look in my face and see!

"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
To let thee come so near.
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--
Not I!--that cannot be,
I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
Look in my face and see."

The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel
recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny
felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its
destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last
verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--

"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine
I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch

Of loyal troth. For me,
I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!
There's no more courage in my soul to say
'Look in my face and see.'"

When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss
Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance,
and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently
reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought
of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.

"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she
was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with
sudden misgivings, having to see t