r speak on the subject," she said.
"She wasn't a member of the church."

Silence followed, and they were two grave faces still that bent over
the table; but there was the difference between the shadow on a
mountain lake where there is not a ripple, and the dark stir of
troubled waters. Diana's eye every now and then glanced for an instant
at the face of her companion; it was very grave, but the broad brow was
as quiet as if all its questions were answered, and the mouth was sweet
and at rest in its stillness. She wished he would speak again; there
was something in him that provoked her curiosity. He did speak
presently.

"This shows us what the meaning of life is," he said.

"No," said Diana, "it doesn't--to me. It is just a puzzle, and as much
a puzzle here as ever. I _don't_ see what the use of life is, or what
we all live for; I don't see what it amounts to."

"What do you mean?" asked her companion, but not as if he were
startled, and Diana went on.

"I shouldn't say so if people were always having a good time, and if
they were just right and did just right. But they are not, Mr. Masters;
you know they are not; even the best of them, that I see; and things
like _this_ are always happening, one way or another. If it isn't here,
it is somewhere else; and if it isn't one time, it is another; and it
is all confusion. I don't see what it all comes to."

"That is the thought of a moment of pain," said the minister.

"No, it is not," said Diana. "I think it often. I think it all the
while. Now this very afternoon I was sitting at the door here,--you
know what sort of a day it has been, Mr. Masters?"

"I know. Perfect. Just June."

"Well, I was looking at it, and feeling how lovely it was; everything
perfect; and somehow all that perfection took a kind of sharp edge and
hurt me. I was thinking why nothing in the world was like it, or agreed
with it; nothing in human life, I mean. This afternoon, when the
company was here and all the talk going on--_that_ was like nothing out
of doors all the while; and _this_ is not like it."

There was a sigh, deep drawn, that came through the minister's lips;
then he spoke cheerfully--"Ay, God's works have parted company somehow."

"Parted--?" said Diana curiously.

"Yes. You remember surely that when he had made all things at first, he
beheld them very good."

"Well, they are not very good now; not all of them."

"Whose fault is that?"

"I know," said Diana, "but that