"And yet she had to give it up so soon. Oh, Mrs. Pennybacker, it seems to me the _saddest_ thing to want to live and have to die! I don't think anything could be harder than that." "Yes. There is something harder than that, Margaret. It is to want to die and have to live." Margaret's face expressed incredulity. Her head was thrown back with a gesture that was habitual with her, and her eyes shining. "You are very happy, Margaret?" said Mrs. Pennybacker, softly. "I don't think anybody could be happier. It almost frightens me sometimes to think how happy. You see, my husband--" she said it in the pretty, hesitating way that young girls use who have not yet got accustomed to the word,--"my husband is so good to me. It seems so blessed to have somebody's tender care around me all the time. I think that is what makes a woman love a man, don't you?... And then I am so glad to have a home. I have never had a home since father died. I don't mean to say that they were not everything to me at Judge Kirtley's that friends could be--you understand that--but they were not my very own, nor I theirs. And I had mourned for father so--had missed him so desperately. I thought of that time when you were speaking of a capacity for suffering. But after a while--well, you know how those things go. While I did not forget him, after a while the world did not seem quite so black, and gradually--" "Yes, child, I know. 'Joy comes, grief goes,--we know not how.'" "That is just it exactly. That is Lowell, isn't it? Then when Victor came into my life-- Mrs. Pennybacker, do you know I think Victor is going to be so much like father in his home." "I hope so," returned Mrs. Pennybacker, but the face of the bridegroom at St. John's rose before her mental vision, and her hope was without the element of faith. "Mrs. Pennybacker, do you suppose father knows? I hope he does. I am almost ashamed to tell you this for fear you will think me silly, but sometimes when Victor has just gone--has told me good-bye for the day, and that he will hurry back as soon as he can, and all that, you know--and it rushes over me so--the blessedness of having a love like his, and a dear home that is to be ours forever--I am--my heart is so overflowing with joy that I go to my room and drop down by the couch and whisper softly, 'Father! I am so happy! Can you hear me, dearest?'" She dashed the tears from her eyes and smiled through wet lashes. "I know it is foolish, Mrs. Pennybacker, and I can't see how I came to be telling it all to you--but I feel as if I want father to know. Do you think he does?" "I am not much of a Spiritualist, Margaret," returned Mrs. Pennybacker, guardedly. "The dye from which my religious faith took its color was very blue,--but certainly if there is such a thing as communion between the living and the dead--or rather the living here and the living there--it would come in answer to a whisper like that."