"Miss Lemark, if you were really lost, and had no beauty, it appears to me that you would not complain about it; people do not, I assure you, who are ugly or in despair. You are overdone, and you overrate your little girlish follies; everything is touched by the color of your thought, but is not really what it seems. Believe me,--as I cannot but believe,--that your inaction arose from morbid feeling and not too strong health; not from true want of energy or courage. You are young, a great deal too young, to trust all you fancy, or even feel; and you ought to be thankful there is nothing more for you to regret than that weighing down your spirit. You will do everything we expect and wish, when you become stronger,--a strong woman, I hope; for remember, you are only a girl. Nor will you find that you are less likely to succeed then because of this little voluntary of _idlesse_." "You are only speaking so because it is troublesome to you to be addressed at all. You do not mean it; you are all music." "There is only one who is all music, Miss Lemark." She hid her face for many minutes; at last she looked up, and said with more softness, a smile almost sweet: "Mr. Auchester, I feel I am detaining you; let me beg you to sit down." I just got up on the side of the bed. "That will do beautifully. And now, Miss Lemark, if I am to be your doctor, you must go to sleep." "Because I shall not talk? But I will not go to sleep, and I will talk. What should you do if you were in my place, feeling as I do?" "I do not know all." "You may if you like." "Then I may guess; at least, I may imagine all that I might feel if I were in your place,--a delicate young lady who has been fainting for the love of music." "You are sneering; I do not mind that. I have seen such an expression upon a face I admire more than yours. Suppose you felt you had seen--" "What I could never forget, nor cease to love," I answered, fast and eagerly; I _could_ not let her say it, or anything just there,--"I should earnestly learn his nature, should fill myself to the brim with his beauty, just as with his music. I should feel that in keeping my heart pure, above all from envy, and my life most like his life, I should be approaching nearer than any earthly tie could lead me, should become worthy of his celestial communion, of his immortal, his heavenly tendencies. Nor should I regret to suffer,--to suffer for his sake." I used these last words--themselves so well remembered--without remembering who said them for me first, till I had fairly spoken; then I, too, longed to weep: Maria's voice was trembling in my brain, a ghostly music. As Laura answered, the ghostly music passed, even as a wind shaken and scattered upon the sea. It was earth again, as vague, scarcely less lonely! "A worldly man would mock. You do not a much wiser thing, but you do it for the best. I will try to hide it forever, for there is, indeed, no hope."