‘You are premature, Mr. Coyshe,’ said Miss Jordan stiffly. ‘If you had waited till my sister were able to speak and act, she would have, herself, released you.’ ‘Exactly,’ said the unabashed surgeon; ‘but I am so considerate of the feelings of the lady, that I spare her the trouble.’ And now let us spread the golden wings of fancy, and fly the scenes of sorrow—but fly, not in space, but in time; measure not miles, but months. It is autumn, far on into September, and Michaelmas has brought with it the last days of summer. Not this the autumn that we saw coming on, with the turning dogwood and bird-cherry, but another. In the garden the colchicum has raised its pale lilac flowers. The Michaelmas daisy is surrounded by the humming-bird moth with transparent wings, but wings that vibrate so fast that they can only be seen as a quiver of light. The mountain ash is hung with clusters of clear crimson berries, and the redbreasts and finches are about it, tearing improvidently at the store, thoughtless of the coming winter, and strewing the soil with wasted coral. Eve is seated in the sun outside the house, in the garden, and on her knees is a baby—Barbara’s child, and yet Eve’s also, for if Barbara gave it life, Eve gave it a name. Before her sister Barbara kneels, now just restored from her confinement, a little pale and large in eye, looking up at her sister and then down at the child. Jasper stands by contemplating the pretty group. ‘Eve,’ said Barbara in a low tremulous voice, ‘I have had for some months on my heart a great fear lest, when my little one came, I should love it with all my heart, and rob you. I had the same fear before I married Jasper, lest he should snatch some of my love away from the dear suffering sister who needs all. But now I have no such fear any more, for love, I find, is a great mystery—it is infinitely divisible, yet ever complete. It is like’—she lowered her voice reverently—’it is like what we Catholics believe about the body of our Lord, the very Sacrament of Love. That is in Heaven and in every church. It is on every altar, and in every communicant, entire. I thought once that when I had a husband, and then a little child, love would suffer diminution—that I could not share love without lessening the portion of each. But it is not so. I love my baby with my whole undivided heart; I love you, my sister, equally with my whole undivided heart; and I love my husband also,’ she turned and smiled at Jasper, ‘with my very whole and undivided heart. It is a great mystery, but love is divine, and divine things are perceived and believed by the heart, though beyond the reason.’ ‘So,’ said Eve, smiling, and with her blue eyes filling, ‘my dear, dear Barbara, once so prosaic and so practical, is becoming an idealist and poetical.’