'Before you have time to miss me,' said her companion; 'it is an affair literally of days. Besides, Elysium, you will find, is all the pleasanter for having its crowd of soldiers somewhat thinned.' 'It will not be the pleasanter to us,' said Maud, 'for your being gone.' Her tone took Sutton greatly by surprise. 'You are having a happy time here, are you not?' he asked. 'It seems to me a pleasant sort of life.' 'Yes,' said Maud, emphatically, 'the pleasantest, happiest I have ever known. All life has been bright to me; but there are things in it that hurt one, for all that.' 'Yes?' said Sutton, with a kind inquiry in his tones, for he had never thought of Maud but as the pretty incarnation of enjoyment; 'well, tell me the things which hurt you.' 'The things that have hurt me the most,' said Maud with a sudden impulse of outspokenness, 'are partings. They grieve me, even though I know that they are no real cause for grief. I minded leaving school and my dear mistress more than I can tell, and yet I longed to go. I minded leaving my friends on board ship, and yet I had only known them a month. I minded leaving you at Dustypore when we came away, and now to-day I am sad because you are leaving us.' 'That makes me sad too,' said Sutton, grieved, and yet not wholly grieved, at each new phase of sentiment which the childish frankness of his companion revealed to him; 'but, you know, we soldiers are for ever on the move, and nobody is surprised or sad when we are ordered off. You love Felicia, do you not?' 'Yes,' said Maud, seriously; 'I feel a sort of worship for her. Who could be so sweet, noble and pure without being adored? But then she makes me melancholy too sometimes, because she is so melancholy herself; and, oh, how far above one! Could one ever hope to be half as good? She fills me with love, but love with a sort of despair about it.' Maud was highly wrought up and feeling strongly and painfully about everything that formed her life. She was full of thoughts that clamoured for expression; and Sutton, she knew not why, seemed the natural and proper recipient; it was so easy almost to confess to him, to trust him with thoughts, hopes, pangs, which instinct said the common eye must never see; to claim from him a sort of gentle, chivalrous protection which no one but he knew how to give. 'Felicia,' Sutton said, 'need fill no one with despair, rather with hopefulness and courage about life. I have known her since she was a child; we two, in fact--children of two sisters, whose marriages had bound them closer in affection to each other--lived for years more as brother and sister than anything else. I have watched her for years gathering strength, calmness, and nobility from going nobly and calmly through the troubles of the world. She seems to me, in the midst of all that is vulgar and base in the world around her, like the Lady in Comus, impervious to everything that could sully or degrade.'