d help through it all; for Rosa, the woman
he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in
what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the
horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every
day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to
blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,--through it all,
she never wavered. When he first told her that he must go, that it was
the one thing he held it wise and right to do, she shrunk back
affrighted, trembling at the coming blankness of a life without him. But
after a while, seeing the misery that came into _his_ face reflected
from hers, she rose bravely above the terrible woe, and then, with her
arms round him and her eyes looking steadfastly into his, she said, "I
love you better than the life you are to me. So I can bear that you
should go."

And he said, "There can be no real severance between those who love as
we do. God, in His mercy and tenderness, will help us to feel that
truth, every hour and every day."

For they believed thus,--these two young Visionaries,--and lived upon
that belief, perhaps, when the time of parting came. And it may be that
the thought of each was very constantly, very intimately present to the
other, during the many years that followed. It may be that this species
of mental atmosphere, so surrounding and commingling with all other
things more visibly and palpably about them, _did_ cause these dreamers
to be happier in their love than many externally united ones, whose lot
appears to us most fair and smooth and blissful. Time and distance,
leagues of ocean and years of suspense, are not the most terrible things
that can come between two people who love one another.

* * * * *

And so Everett Gray, his mother, and his sister, went to Canada. A year
after, Agnes was married to Charles Barclay, then a thriving merchant in
Montreal. When the people at home heard of this, they very wisely
acknowledged "how much good there had been in that young man, in spite
of his rashness and folly in early days. No fear about such a man's
getting on in life, when once he gave his mind to it," and so forth.

Meanwhile, our Visionary----But what need is there to trace him, step by
step, in the new life he doubtless found fully as arduous as he had
anticipated? That it was a very struggling, difficult, and uncongenial
life to him can be well unde