Madame threw over the game she was in, and began a new one. "Such women should not be unhappy; they are too fragile, too sensitive, too trusting. I could never understand the infliction of misery upon them. I could send death to them, but not--not misfortune." Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal. "And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of life. They seem predestined to it, as others"--looking at madame's full-charmed portrait--"are predestined to triumph and victory. They"--unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his simile--"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a losing game." "Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation. "It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired ones!" As his voice sank lower and lower, the room seemed to become stiller and stiller. A passing vehicle in the street, however, now and then drew a shiver of sound from the pendent prisms of the chandelier. "She was so slight, so fragile, and always in white, with blue in her hair to match her eyes--and--God knows what in her heart, all the time. And yet they stand it, they bear it, they do not die, they live along with the strongest, the happiest, the most fortunate of us," bitterly; "and"--raising his eyes to his old friend, who thereupon immediately began to fumble her cards--"whenever in the street I see a poor, bent, broken woman's figure, I know, without verifying it any more by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's figure; whenever I hear of a bent, broken existence, I know, without asking any more, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's life." Poor Mr. Horace spoke with the unreason of a superstitious bigot. "I have often thought, since, in large assemblies, particularly in weddings, Josephine, of what was going on in the women's hearts there, and I have felt sorry for them; and when I think of God's knowing what is in their hearts, I have felt sorry for the men. And I often think now, Josephine,--think oftener and oftener of it,--that if the resurrection trumpet of our childhood should sound some day, no matter when, out there, over the old St. Louis cemetery, and we should all have to rise from our long rest of oblivion, what would be the first thing we should do? And though there were a God and a heaven awaiting us,--by that same God, Josephine, I believe that our first thought in awakening would be the last in dying,--confession,--and that our first rush would be to the feet of one another for forgiveness. For there are some offenses that must outlast the longest oblivion, and a forgiveness that will be more necessary than God's own. Then our hearts will be bared to one another; for if, as you say, there are no secrets at our age, there can still be less cause for them after death."