"You don't know half how heavy!" I sobbed. "If you did, you wouldn't think it a sin for me to pray to die."
"Take the harder penance, and submit to live. Death doesn't always come for the asking. God has sent you a terrible trial, but he will help you through it if you will only keep that in mind."
"No, no. God did not send it. I have brought it on myself—it is all my own deed! Oh! if you only knew"——
"I do know. I know you are disappointed in the man you love—that you have found weakness where you fancied strength: but I know that, woman-like, you still love, if possible, more tenderly than before your idol was shattered, and that you are shrinking now from the prospect of a long and uncertain separation. I pity you, believe me, I pity you; but these are griefs that time has a cure for. Do not talk of despair till you have felt what it is to be unloved and unblest—to be without an interest on earth, with but a slender right to hope in heaven—to be thwarted in all you undertake, balked of all you desire—till you have seen another and an unworthier hand take down your crown of life, and wear it careless in your sight."
"Perhaps I know all that as well as you," was on my lips, but I only hid my face and turned away. He did not understand the gesture, and said sadly, after a pause:
"Why are you so wretched? I have assured you there is little danger, and what is there so insupportable in the separation of a year or two? Or is it something in the manner of parting; were you unprepared to find him gone? Did he leave no good bye?"
"No," I said, glad to have some excuse for my tears; "I never dreamed of his going—it is too unkind! And I shall never forgive myself either; when I saw him last, there was some misunderstanding, and I have not explained it to him! He has gone away in despair and in anger! Oh, I shall never, never forgive myself!"
"You may overrate the cause," said my companion, "perhaps he may have found it more prudent to fly now, and could not wait to see you. Look about the room, there may be a letter somewhere, or he may have left one with Kitty."
"Kitty knows nothing of it, and I do not see any letter."
"What is that little package—beyond you—there on the table?"