"I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me through and through.
"Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all."
She ceased, and the silence was like that which follows sweet music.
"Ah! you think of your father!" he hazarded, and hoped indeed it was her father of whom she was thinking.
She made no answer. He turned toward her in anxiety. She was struggling with emotion. The next instant the tears gushed into her eyes, while a smile seemed to struggle from her lips, and spread a little way over her face. It was inexpressibly touching.
"He was my friend," she said. "I shall never have such love again."
"All is not lost when much is lost," said the doctor, with sad comfort.
"There are spring days in winter."
"And you don't like poetry!" she said, a sweet playful scorn shining through her tears.
"I spoke but a sober truth," he returned; "—so sober that it seems but the sadder for its truth. The struggle of life is to make the best of things that might be worse."
She looked at him pitifully. For a moment her lips parted, then a strange look as of sudden bodily pain crossed her face, her lips closed, and her mouth looked as if it were locked. She shut the book which lay upon her knee, and resumed her needlework. A shadow settled upon her face.