But when we look back across our journey, do we not forget alike the hill and the plain? Do we not rather remember that one turn, exceeding sharp, of the narrow inevitable way, what time the light failed, and the ground yawned beneath our feet, and we knew fear? There is a slow descent, awful, step by step, into a growing darkness, which those know who have strength to make it. Only the strong are broken on certain wheels. Only the strong know the dim landscape of Hades, that world which underlies the lives of all of us. I cannot follow Janet down into it. I can only see her as a shadow, moving among shadows; going down unconsciously with tears in her eyes, taking, poor thing, her brave, loving unselfish heart with her, to meet anguish, desolation, desertion, and at last despair. If we needs must go down that steep stair we go alone, and who shall say how it fared with us? Nature has some appalling beneficent processes, of which it is not well to speak. Life has been taught at the same knee, out of the same book, and when her inexorable disintegrating hand closes over us, the abhorrent darkness, from which we have shrunk with loathing, becomes our only friend. * * * * * In the following autumn and winter Janet slowly descended, inch by inch, step by step, that steep stair. She reached at last the death of love. She thought she reached it many times before she actually touched it. She believed she reached it when the news of George's engagement penetrated to her. But she did not in reality. No, she hoped against hope to the last day, to the morning of his wedding. She did not know she hoped. She supposed she had long since given up all thought of a reconciliation between her and her lover. But when the wedding was over, when he was really gone, then something broke within her--the last string of the lyre over which blind Hope leans. There are those who tell us that we have not suffered till we have known jealousy. Janet's foot reached that lowest step, and was scorched upon it. Only then she realised that she had never, never believed that he could really leave her. Even on his wedding morning she had looked out across the fields, by which she had so often seen him come, which had been so long empty of that familiar figure. She knew he was far away at the house of the bride, but nevertheless she expected that he would come to her, and hold her to his heart, and say: "But, Janet, I could never marry anyone but you. You know such a thing could never be. What other woman could part you and me, who cannot part?" And then the evil dream would fall from her, and she and George would look gravely at each other, and the endless, endless pain would pass away. * * * * * Wrapt close against the anguish of love there is always a word such as this with which human nature sustains its aching heart--poor human nature which believes that, come what come may, Love can never die.