Cone’s mind was full of the grandeur before him, but his heart, cold as he was, was keenly alive to the needs of those who had been friends, so together they walked arm in arm to their lodgings. “Now, let’s talk over the ten years, Cone. Ten years make a fool or a wise man of a fellow—carry him up to the gates or down to the depths.” “Tell me what they have done for you, Marsh. You know how much I have to thank you and your young wife for the sunshine you put into my life when we travelled together before. She seemed like a sister to me. She understood me; and that is where most women fail. They do not know us, or we do not know them, so our true natures never come side by side; but she seemed to feel the pulse of my life. She knew just when I needed jovial words and when I needed sympathy or quiet. She had the tact I have heard so often described, but seldom seen, and a pure, good heart back of it. I fear all hasn’t gone right with you. Can it be that you are walking alone, like myself?” Tears gathered in Marsh’s eyes. He had almost a woman’s heart and a woman’s love. “It isn’t hard for you to stand alone, but for me it is crushing. I buried my wife in England six months ago. We came for her health, but she failed rapidly and went away soon after we arrived. Our little girl is boarding with friends, and I wander anywhere, everywhere,—so I can forget. I cannot go back to America. Nothing binds me there. I seem unfit for labor, and I am adrift. You know she was like an anchor. I depended upon her judgment, upon her help, upon her love. When a woman leans entirely upon a man, and she is taken away, he may feel as though something dear and beautiful had gone out from him; but when a woman has strength enough to be a companion, a counsellor, in the deeds and plans of every day,—when she is not a pet merely, but a guide to everything noble,—when, whether you will or not, you are kept upon a plane of right and duty and manhood,—what shall a poor relying heart do?” “Would you wish to forget, Marsh? I would put such a blessing away in my heart and grow strong from daily looking at it.” “I can’t keep it, Cone. I must get away from such memories. I feel as though I drifted hither and thither, because there is no hand on the helm. To remember is misery: to forget might be relief.” “And yet, do you not owe such a wife a loving, yearning remembrance? One might forget a flower that blossomed for his pleasure for a day or a week; but hold in grateful memory a spring that opened in the desert of a parched life and became an unfailing supply. Memories sometimes are almost as sweet as present realities, and sometimes we are made even stronger by the one than by the other.” “That may be good philosophy for those who have never loved and lost. No one can know till he has the trial. I have one left, I know, but that does not fill the place of the other, and perchance no one ever could.”