t, when Ellen
was talking. To think of all that you were to me, all that you did for
me, and that I should have forgotten it. Oh, how is it that we've got
apart?"

"I don't know," said Henrietta; "I don't think there is anything much to
like in me. No one does care for me. I think if no one likes one, one
doesn't deserve to be liked."

"Oh, nothing in this life goes by deserts."

"People love you, and they're quite right; you ought to be loved. You
did care for me once, though. Herbert wrote--you know, when we lost--'A
good cry with you will be more comfort to Evelyn than anything else.'
Even then, in the middle of it all, it made me happy."

"Oh, Etta, what you were to me then!"

Henrietta took Evelyn's hand and squeezed it convulsively. When she
could speak, she said: "Evelyn, do you ever think of our children?"

"Think of them--of course I do. Do you, Etta?"

"I used to, but I tried not to--it was too bitter. The children were
what I lived for, and I don't think of them often now. It's past and
gone."

"Oh, I couldn't live if I didn't. I don't think it is bitter now. These
dear boys, they're not quite the same to me as the ones that were
taken."

"I thought you'd forgotten them."

"I thought you had, Etta, and I couldn't help feeling it."

"Herbert asked me never to speak about them to you."

"Dear Herbert, he is so good--I can't tell you how good he is to me--but
he never will mention them. First of all I was so ill, I couldn't stand
talking of them, but now I can, and I do long for it. He doesn't forget
them, I know, but I think men live more in the present than we do; and
he has his work, which absorbs him very much, and it isn't quite the
same for a man. And then they were so delicate, particularly Madeline,
that I was wrapped up in them all their lives; and they were so small,
he couldn't see much of them."

"Do you feel that you could tell me about them?"

"Yes, I should like to."

They talked far into the night. Herbert was away, so that there was no
one to stop them, and when at last the dawn drove them to bed, Evelyn
said: "I can't tell you how much good you've done me. I seem to have
been living for this for fifteen years."

They neither of them slept at all that night. Both were full of remorse,
but Henrietta's was the bitterest. The life which had seemed to do quite
well enough all these years, suddenly appeared to her as it was. She
contrasted her present self with the little girl El