Time passed on, and our silent intimacy increased. At length each day I gathered some fresh flowers, and placed them on the window-sill. Ursula blushed, and took them with a gentle, grateful smile. Clustering in her girdle, and arranged within her room, they brought summer to the old gray house. It happened one evening that as I was returning through the alley a sudden storm of rain came on. Ursula darted toward the door, caught my hand as I was passing, and drew me into the narrow passage which led to her room. Then the poor girl clasped both my hands in hers, and murmured, softly, "Thanks!" It was the first time I had heard her voice, and I entered her apartment. It was a large, low room, with a red-tiled floor, furnished with straw chairs ranged along the walls. Being lighted by only one small window, it felt damp and gloomy. Ursula was right to seat herself close by the casement to seek a little light and air. I understood the reason of her paleness--it was not that she had lost the freshness of youth, but that she had never possessed it. She was bleached like a flower that has blossomed in the shade. In the farthest corner of the room, seated on arm-chairs, were two persons, an old man and woman. The latter was knitting without looking at her work--she was blind. The man was unemployed: he gazed vacantly at his companion without a ray of intelligence in his face: it was evident that he had overpassed the ordinary limit of human life, and that now his body alone existed. Sometimes in extreme old age the mind, as though irritated by its long captivity, tries to escape from its prison, and in its efforts, breaks the harmonious chord that links them together. It chafes against the shattered walls; it has not taken flight, but it feels itself no longer in a place of rest. These, then, were the inhabitants of the silent gray house--a blind old woman, an imbecile old man, and a young girl faded before her time by the sadness and gloom that surrounded her! Her life had been a blank; each year had borne away some portion of her youth, her beauty, and her hope, and left her nothing but silence and oblivion. I often returned to visit Ursula, and one day, while I sat next her in the window, she told me the simple story of her life.