It was a cruel weapon to use, but on the instant John made up his mind to use it. It might spare Carlen grief, in the end. "I have thought," he said, "that it might be for a dead sweetheart he mourned thus. There are men, you know, who love that way and never smile again." Short-sighted John, to have dreamed that he could forestall any conjecture in the girl's heart! "I have thought of that," she answered meekly; "it would seem as if it could be nothing else. But, John, if she be really dead--" Carlen did not finish the sentence; it was not necessary. After a silence she spoke again: "Dear John, if you could be more friendly with him I think it might be different. He is your age. Father and mother are too old, and to me he will not speak." She sighed deeply as she spoke these last words, and went on: "Of course, if it is for a dead sweetheart that he is grieving thus, it is only natural that the sight of women should be to him worse than the sight of men. But it is very seldom, John, that a man will mourn his whole life for a sweetheart; is it not, John? Why, men marry again, almost always, even when it is a wife that they have lost; and a sweetheart is not so much as a wife." "I have heard," said the pitiless John, "that a man is quicker healed of grief for a wife than for one he had thought to wed, but lost." "You are a man," said Carlen. "You can tell if that would be true." "No, I cannot," he answered, "for I have loved no woman but you, my sister; and on my word I think I will be in no haste to, either. It brings misery, it seems to me." If Carlen had spoken her thought at these words, she would have said, "Yes, it brings misery; but even so it is better than joy." But Carlen was ashamed; afraid also. She had passed now into a new life, whither her brother, she perceived, could not follow. She could barely reach his hand across the boundary line which parted them. "I hope you will love some one, John," she said. "You would be happy with a wife. You are old enough to have a home of your own." "Only a year older than you, my sister," he rejoined. "I too am old enough to have a home of my own," she said, with a gentle dignity of tone, which more impressed John with a sense of the change in Carlen than all else which had been said. It was time to return to the house. As he had done when he was ten, and she nine, John stood at the bottom of the steepest rock, with upstretched arms, by the help of which Carlen leaped lightly down. "We are not children any more," she said, with a little laugh. "More's the pity!" said John, half lightly, half sadly, as they went on hand in hand. When they reached the bars, Carlen paused. Withdrawing her hand from John's and laying it on his shoulder, she said: "Brother, will you not try to find out what is Wilhelm's grief? Can you not try to be friends with him?" John made no answer. It was a hard thing to promise.