"I don't understand her at all," said Van Berg, in a tone that proved him greatly annoyed with himself. "I have thought that I had sounded the shallow depths of her character several times, and then some new and perplexing phase would present itself, and put me all to sea again. It may seem ludicrous to you that her beauty should irritate me so greatly because of its incongruous associations." "Not at all," she replied, with a little nod. "I was not long in discovering that you were a pagan, and that beauty was your divinity." "Correct in all respects save the divinity," he answered promptly; and he would have said more, but she passed into the parlor among the other guests. Ida found herself too weak and unnerved to walk far, but she discovered a secluded nook into which the sunlight streamed with a grateful warmth; for although the day was warm, she shivered with cold as if the chill in her heart had diffused itself even to her hands and feet. Dense shrubbery hid her from the path along which she saw Stanton pass in his fruitless quest. For a long time she sat in dreary apathy, almost as motionless as the mossy rock beneath her, and was conscious only of her throbbing forehead and aching heart. Gradually, however, nature's vital touch began to revive her. The sunlight warmed and tranquilized the exquisite form that had been entering its shuddering protest against the chill and corruption of the grave. The south wind, laden with fresh woodland odors, fanned her cheeks, and whispered that there were flowers blooming that she could not see, and that the future also might reveal joys now hidden and unknown, if she would only be patient. Every rustling leaf that fluttered in the gale, but did not fall, called to her with its tiny voice: "Cling to your place, as we do, till the frost of age or the blight of disease brings the end in God's own time and way." A partridge with her brood rustled by along the edge of the forest, and the poor girl imagined she saw in the parent bird, as she led forward her plump little bevy, the pride and complacency of a happy motherhood, which now would never be hers; and from the depths of her woman's heart came nature's protest. Then her heavy eyes were attracted by the sport of two gray squirrels that were racing to the top of one tree, scrambling down another, falling and catching again, and tumbling over each other in their mad excitement. She felt that, at her age, their exuberant life and enjoyment should be a type of her own, but their wild, innocent fun, in contrast with her despair, became so unendurable that she sprang up and frightened them away.