"If he did, he dreamed it with his eyes wide open, depend on that. Oh, Ellie, Ellie; anyone who pretends to be good and who is good to you, can pull the wool over your eyes, you dear little confiding thing." But Ellen felt as if some one through this act, small as it seemed, had torn from her eyes a veil of confidence in things good and true that no one could ever replace. If things could only be different in this life! If she had only told Aunt Clara, she would have so measured her judgment and comment that this event would have strengthened Ellen's faith, while pointing out the absurdity in a sweet, motherly way! But to have Tom tell her such a thing; thus treating a sacred sacrament as a matter of light ridicule--this was most galling; and that she could believe it, too! It cut Ellen to the soul, to have her friend laugh so, as much at her own childish simplicity as at Tom's foolery. Oh, it was cruel! But Diantha could not help laughing. The ridiculous picture, the banner; the inscription; it was too funny! Ah, foolish youth, so credulous, so incredulous, so tender, and yet so cruel! And only poets and prophets may tell us which is comedy and which is tragedy. For laughter may presage death, while death itself is the door to love and life eternal! XX. A SOLDIER IN DISTRESS There was a coolness between the two girls after the dream episode, which lasted for a number of weeks. Diantha could not see why her friend should take offense at such a trifle, as she termed it. As for Ellen, she felt in an indefinable way, that somebody had, with the tiny point of a pin, shattered what to her had been the most beautiful bubble she had ever possessed. She was too little inclined to look back of events for causes, to attempt any rational explanation of the whole matter; she only knew that it had been delightfully romantic to fancy herself the subject of a vision and to feel she was the chosen of heaven for exalted positions; and when her one foolish trust had been shaken and her dream rudely dispelled, she felt as if there was not truth or stability in anyone or anything. The blow was crueller than her friend had any idea of; what the results would be only time and the offended girl's actions could tell. Ellen now took her walks by the river alone. She shunned Tom Allen as coldly as she did Diantha Winthrop. She would wander off, and with a pensiveness peculiar in one so light-hearted, avoided everyone, whether friend or stranger. She would go to the old bathing place and after lying on the grass for hours in moody silence, slip on her old home-spun bathing dress, and plunging into the cool waters of the river, she would lave her hot and tired limbs in the cooling waters, after which she would feel better and able to go back once more to an existence which had become monotonous and dreary. Love and admiration are as necessary to women of Ellen's affectionate nature as are sunlight and warmth to growing plants.