was to be expected."

"Even when one never had a home?" she asked. "The nearest thing to it
that I have had was the convent where I was educated. The sisters were
very good to me. It was a sweet home, and of course I do miss it at
times."

"Perhaps you had a dear friend there among the sisters, or possibly the
pupils."

"Oh, yes," she said, "a dear girl friend--Nina her name was. She was a
year younger than I, and was not permitted to leave the convent to see
me married. She was heartbroken. We had always planned that the one
first married was to take the other to live with her. Her parents are
both dead."

"Ah, then when she leaves school she will come to you, no doubt," said
Noel. "That will be delightful for you."

"I don't know. It is not certain. No, I don't think she will do that,"
said his companion, evidently in some confusion. "The fact is I have
not written to her--I couldn't. I don't know what she will think of me,
but I cannot write to her. I have tried in vain. I fear she will be
hurt, but I have done no more than send her a brief note to tell her she
must not judge me by the frequency of my letters--that I love her just
the same--but I seem really not to know what to write. It is all so
strange--the new country and the changes--and everything being so
different--and I feel she would want a full and interesting letter,
which I cannot yet compose myself to write. This seems very strange, but
it will be different in time, will it not? You don't think this feeling
of being in such a strange, strange land, as if it couldn't be real, and
couldn't be I--myself--will last always, do you? It will surely pass
away. Oh, if you knew how I long to feel at home--to feel it is a place
where I am to stay! I feel all the time that I must be just on the way
to somewhere, and that I have just stopped here a little while. But I
have not. It is my home and I am to spend my life here. I try to tell
myself that all day long and make myself believe it, but I cannot. I
often fear it will distress my husband that I feel so, but he has not
found it out, I'm glad to say. He seems so quiet and satisfied, that I
feel ashamed to feel so restless. It will go away in time, will it not?
It is perhaps because I am a foreigner and this is a strange land that
the feeling is so strong, but it was almost the same when we were in
Italy. Sometimes I am afraid I have not a contented disposition, and
that I will make myself unhappy always by