And with that we were silent again, I watching Dorothy curiously when the firelight revealed her face to me, and wondering whether I might now trust myself to ask her concerning her servant. But on a sudden my eyes lit upon a certain great old book in a brown binding that lay beside her on the settle, half hid by her gown, and stretching out my hand I took it up. “Why, here is the ‘Arcadia’!” says I, undoing the silver clasps. “Have you been diverting yourself with the pretty fancies of the gentle knight, cousin?” “I chanced upon the old book up-stairs this morning,” says she, “and brought it hither for to recall old days withal.” “Suffer me also to recall ’em,” says I, and opening the book, sought out that pathetical piece of the parting of Argalus and Parthenia, over the which we had so often mingled our tears when we was children, and thereafter the moving scene wherein Parthenia is slain by Amphialus, the which did draw tears from Dorothy even now. And as for me, I found it hard to read, for the remembrance of the early days was so strong upon me that I conceived a double meaning in all the words, seeing Dorothy in Parthenia when she cries to Argalus, saying, _Woe is me; what shall become of me, if you thus abandon me?_ And in this I wan’t alone, for I perceived that my cousin was much moved by those other words of Parthenia--viz., _O Life, O Death, answer for me, that my thoughts have not so much as in a dreame tasted any comfort since they were depriv’d of Argalus_. “Sure,” says I to myself, “I am a worse murderer than ever was Amphialus, and should experience a greater remorse, since I have slain that sweet love and confidence that my cousin once reposed in me.” But this was when I had ended my reading, and Dorothy was wiping away her tears. “’Tis all one as though we was children again,” she said, as though excusing herself. “We have sat here so often just as now, and you have read Argalus and Parthenia by the firelight.” “I have wished more than once, cousin,” says I, “that we might be Polyxandra and Cleombrocles again, with all our troubles but a phantasy.” “And so have I,” she said, and was silent, and neither she nor I spake one word for some time. Then Dorothy rose up suddenly. “’Tis a foolish wish, cousin,” says she. “We an’t babes now, but man and woman grown, and as our lives are, so we have made ’em, and so they must be lived.”