When he saw her he made a pretense indeed of greeting her as before, but he was like a man trying to look upon a fog as upon a sunrise; for the old beauty of her face did not strike his eyes full of its own radiance. She saw the struggle of his smile and the wincing of his soul. But she did not wince, for she was by now bitterly accustomed to this reticence and self-control. He walked along the street with her, and looked always aside or ahead and talked of other things. He walked with her to her own gate, and to her porch, trying to find some light thing to say to leave her. But the cruelty of the world was like a rusty nail in his heart, and when he put out his hand and she set in his hand what her once so exquisite fingers were now, his heart broke in his breast; and when he lifted his eyes to what her once so triumphant face was now, they refused to withhold their tears, and his lips could not hold back his thoughts, and he groaned aloud: "Oh, you were so beautiful! No one was ever so beautiful as you were then. But now--I can't stand it! I can't stand it! I wish that I might have died for you. You were so beautiful! I can see you now as you were when I told you good-by." Then he was afraid for what he had said, and ashamed, and he dreaded to look at her again. He would have dashed away, but she seized him by the sleeve, and whispered: "How good it is to hear your words! You are the only one that has told me that I ever was beautiful since I became what I am. Tell me, tell me how I looked when you bade me good-by!" And he told her. Looking aside or at the sky, he told her of her face like a rose in the moonlight, of her hair like some mist spun and woven in shadows and glamours of its own, of her long creamy arms and her hands that a god had fashioned lovingly. He told her of her eyes and their deeps, and their lashes and the brows above them. He told her of the strange rhythm of her musical form when she walked or danced or leaned upon the arm of her chair. He dared not look at her lest he lose his remembrance of them; but he heard her laughing, softly at first, then with pride and wild triumph. And she crushed his hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring: "God bless you! God bless you!" For even in poverty it is sweet to know that once we were rich. THE GHOSTLY COUNSELORS I In a little hall bedroom in a big city lay a little woman in a big trouble. She had taken the room under an assumed name, and a visitor had come to her there--to little her in the big city, from the bigger unknown. She had taken the room as "Mrs. Emerton." The landlady, Mrs. Rotch, had had her doubts. But then she was liberal-minded--folks had to be in that street. Still, she made it an invariable rule that "no visitors was never allowed in rooms," a parlor being kept for the purpose up to ten o'clock, when the landlady went to bed in it, "her having to have her sleep as well as anybody."