Mrs. Goodwin looked at Gunhild as if by a new light. Next in importance to the discovery of genius itself, is the discovery that genius is picking its way along the briary path of love, lifting a thorny bough in bloom to peep blushingly from a hiding place, or boldly to tear through the brambles out into the open, and in honest resentment defy the wondering gaze of the common eye. It would be a pretty sight to see this girl in love, the woman mused. She did not wish to see her married to a man who labored in a field; but it would be delicious to see her love him and hating herself for it, fighting a rosy battle with her heart. There was no romance in loving an "available" man; there was no suffering in it, and how empty was a love that did not swallow a midnight sob! She asked Gunhild to walk out into the woods with her. They crossed a low, marshy place where pickerel split the trashy water in the spring of the year, and strolled up a slope into the woods. They gathered flowers, talking of things that interested neither of them; they found an old log covered with moss and here they sat down to rest. It was always sad to feel that the summer would soon be gone, the elderly woman said, gazing at a soldierly mullein stalk, nodding its yellow head. More summers were coming, and the leaves and the flowers would be the same, the grass as green, the birds as full of happy life; but the heart could not be turned back to live over the hours and the days--only, in dreaming, in reminders of the time forever gone. To the youthful, two summers are twins; to the older, they are relatives; to the aged, strangers. "You make me sad when you talk that way," said the girl. "My dear child, a sadness to-day may be food for sweet reflection in the future. Indeed, it would even be well for you to suffer now." "But I do not want to suffer. I do not see the need of it." "My dear, suffering prepares us for the better life. It makes us more thankful." "I do not know that," she said with energy. "Sometimes it may harden us. We may be kept from food so long that we have no manners when we come to the table." "Gunhild, that is a very good remark--a thoughtful remark, true in the main, but not illustrative of the point I wish to make. But you are so full of hope that--" "Full of hope, madam?" "Yes, the hope that rises from health and strength. You have so much to look forward to. You might make a brilliant match." "Then I must hope that sometime I may sell myself?" "Oh, no, no. I didn't mean that. I mean that you have prospects. Shall I be plain? You have the prospects of loving one man and marrying another. That is called a brilliant match, I believe. Or, at least, it is a feature of nearly all brilliant matches. Don't you think so?" "I am not supposed to know, madam." "Not even to please me?" "Oh, if it please you, I am supposed to know everything."