"But--but I don't understand! You love Jean; she is your best friend. You are not _sorry_ that she is happy? You don't grudge her her good fortune? That wouldn't be possible. You are far too sweet." Vanna gave a short, despairing laugh. "No, I'm not sweet. I'm bitter, bitter to the core; and you might as well know the truth--at this minute I _do_ grudge her happiness. I grudge it so much that my very love seems changed to gall. You are an angel, Miggles, but you are old, and your life is over. I'm young, and it's all ahead. It's the most difficult lesson of all to stand aside and look at happiness through the eyes of others. It's easy enough to weep with those that weep. If we are whole ourselves we are thankful that we have escaped; if we are under the ban, there's a companionship in suffering. We understand each other, and help each other along; but to rejoice with those who rejoice demands a nobility of which at the moment I am simply incapable. This world is unfair and unjust. Things are too horribly uneven." "Dear child, this world is not all. It's only the beginning, and so soon over." "Oh, no, Miggles, that's not true. It may seem so from the standpoint of eternity; but we are human creatures, and from our standpoint it's terribly, terribly long. Fourscore years, and how slow those years are in the passing! When I think I may have fifty more!... Besides, even eternity doesn't right things. How can it? If we are all going to be happy in heaven, Jean will be as happy as I. There will be no difference between us, but she will have had the earth-joy which I have missed, the dear, sweet, simple, domestic joys for which I was made, for which my body was fashioned, for which I crave. They are gone--gone for ever! Eternity itself can't make them up. There seems no compensation." The old woman pressed her hand on the girl's dark head, but for some minutes she did not speak. Into her placid, gentle nature, such upheavals had never come; she had been content to walk along the narrow way, taking each day as it came, without bitterness or repining, but the natural shrewdness which relieved her character from insipidity would not allow her to take the credit of this attribute to herself. "It's because I was given that disposition," she told herself humbly. "Vanna is clever and ambitious. It's more difficult for her." She shut her eyes, and prayed that the right words might be sent to her feeble lips.