this peaceful life when the youth left home for
college. The girl's eyes seemed to grow larger from intense gazing at
him during the last few weeks that preceded his departure, but that
was her only expression of feeling. The morning after he left, the
nurse, not finding her appear at her usual time, went to her chamber
to look for her. She lay on the bed, as she had been lying all the
night, sleepless, with pale face and red lips. Nurse asked her what
was the matter.

"Nothing," was the reply.

"Come get up, Beauty," coaxed the nurse.

But Nellie turned her face to the wall and did not answer. She lay
thus for a week, scarcely eating or sleeping, sick in mind and body,
struggling with a grief that she hardly knew was grief. At the end
of that time she tottered from the bed, and, clothing herself with
difficulty, crept to the library.

The instinct that sends a sick animal to the plant that will cure
it seemed to teach Nellie where to find comfort. Danby was gone, but
memory remained, and the place where he had been was to her made
holy and possessed healing power, as does the shrine of a saint for a
believer. Her shrine was the reading-desk, and the chair on which he
had sat during those happy lessons. To make all complete, she lifted
the heavy book from the shelf and opened it at the page from which she
had first learned. She put herself in his chair and caressed the words
with her thin hand, her fingers trembling over the place that his had
touched, then dropping her head on the desk where his arm had lain,
she smiling slept.

She awoke with the nurse looking down on her, saying, "Beauty, you are
better."

And so she was: she drank the broth and ate the bread and grapes that
had been brought her, and from that day grew stronger. But the shadow
in her eyes was deeper now, and the veins in her temples were bluer,
as if the blood had throbbed and pained there. Every morning found
her at her post: she had no need to roam the woods and fields now--her
world lay within her. It was sad for one so young to live on memory.

For many days her page and these few words were sufficient to content
her, and to recall them one after another, as Danby had taught, was
her only occupation. But by and by the words themselves began to
interest her, then the context, and finally the sense dawned upon
her--dawned not less surely that it came slowly, and that she was now
and then compelled to stop and think out a word.

And what