"Love is sweet, but, oh, how sad it is, too!" she sighed. "Oh, how cruel it is to love and be beloved again, yet be severed from one's love by so strange and cruel a fate as mine."
She read aloud, in a soft, murmuring voice, like sweetest music, some verses from Daisy Lynn's book:
"It is the spirit's bitterest pain
To love and be beloved again,
And yet between a gulf that ever
The hearts that burn to meet must sever!"
"With me the hope of life is gone,
The sun of joy is set;
One wish my heart still dwells upon,
The wish it could forget!
I would forget that look, that tone,
My heart has all too dearly known.
But who could ever yet efface
From memory love's enduring trace?
All may revolt, all my complain,
But who is there may break the chain?"
"Poor Daisy Lynn! how could she love Ivan Belmont like that?" exclaimed Kathleen, in disgust, forgetting that he was a rather handsome man, and that tastes differ. A longing to see what Daisy Lynn looked like came over her, and she searched the room in vain for her picture.
Then she went down and asked Miss Watts if she might see her niece's photograph.
The old blind lady looked up with gentle displeasure.
"Daisy, child, have you no memory of the past?" she exclaimed. "You know very well that in all your life I have never allowed you to have your picture taken!"
"But why not?" asked Kathleen, in wonder.