"No," she said, "that cannot be. And, believe me, there is nothing dreadful in it all to me now. The struggle is over both for me and, I hope, even for those who love me most. It is all right. But thank you for your sweet sympathy. Do not mind about me, however. You have said of yourself what I hesitated to say. I was wondering why you looked so sad, and I see it is true that you are not happy. Yet--" She glanced at Imogen's pretty fur-trimmed winter dress, "you are not in mourning; you have your mother, and health and youth, and--plenty of things both useful and pleasant to do?" "I don't do them," the girl replied bluntly. "I suppose they are there, if I cared to look for them. But I have no heart or interest in anything. I was really ill last year--last winter--rather badly, and I got into lazy ways, I suppose, and--and--oh, I'm just unhappy, and I don't see why I should be, and why there should be so many things all wrong and sad." "If we _could_ see the `why' of such things, the wrongness and the sadness would be gone," said the invalid. Imogen looked perplexed. "Ye-es," she said. "Yes; if we saw it was a good `why,' of course it would seem different." "Then should we not _believe_ it is a good `why?'" and the young lady smiled again. "I suppose we _should_," Imogen allowed. "There is one thing that all who know anything about human nature agree upon," said the invalid, "and that is, that without suffering, without having suffered, we should be very poor creatures indeed; we should scarcely be at the beginning of better things." "Yea, suffering like yours--high and good and noble sort of suffering," said Imogen. "And suffering borne meekly and patiently and cheerfully-- that's quite different. But when it's only selfish, and mostly your own fault, and when you do nothing but kick at it and feel horrid--" The invalid smiled again. "If we were able at once to accept and bear patiently the suffering, we should not need its discipline," she said. "No, it _goes_ deeper and wider than that. Suffering is the door opening for us--opening on to the higher road." Imogen was silent. She was impressed, but still perplexed. "Mine--the--the trial or disappointment, or whatever it should be called, that spoilt my life was not like that. It seemed only _lowering_--only degrading." "Don't say that!" the invalid exclaimed eagerly. "Nothing can degrade us but our own wrong-doing, and the true lowering is that which lowers us only to raise us higher in the end." Imogen considered. "I don't know that I quite understand you," she said. "I am afraid you are too clever for me. I am not clever, and I have never thought much about religious things; they seem so dull and difficult--at least nearly always. I know I am wrong _now_; I am useless and selfish and discontented." "The last is sure, thank God for it, to follow on the two others," her new friend interpolated.