When her mood is thus tranquil, she talks graciously and evenly and positively, and is beautiful to look at. My mind was now in much confusion upon the subject in question. But I felt that I must know all that Annabel Lee thought about it. “What would you say, Annabel Lee,” said I, “to a case like this: If a soul were at variance with everything that touches it, everything that makes life, so that it must struggle through the long nights and long days with bitterness, is not that because the soul has no sense of proportion, and has not made itself properly relative to each and everything that is?--relative, so that when one hard thing touches it, simultaneously one soft thing will touch it; or when it mourns for dead days, simultaneously it rejoices for live ones; or when its best-loved gives it a deep wound, simultaneously its best enemy gives it vivid pleasure.” “Nothing is relative,” again said Annabel Lee. “Nothing can be relative. Nothing need be relative. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling days and nights, that is a matter relating peculiarly to the soul, and to nothing else, _nothing_ else. If a soul is wearing itself to small shreds by struggling, the more fool it. It is struggling because of things that would never, _never_ struggle because of it. In truth, not one of them would move itself one millionth of an inch because of so paltry a thing as a soul.” I looked at Annabel Lee, her hair, her hands and her eyes. As I looked, I was reminded of the word “eternity.” A human being is a quite wonderful thing, truly--and great--there’s none greater. Annabel Lee is a person who always says truth, for, for her, there is nothing else to say. She has reached that marvelous point where a human being expects nothing. “If the days of a life, Annabel Lee,” I said, “are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it, and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves makes its own heart like lead, then what can there be to smooth away its weariness, in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?” “Foolish life,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There is no pain in Japan like what comes of loving some one or some thing. And if the some one or the some thing is the only thing the life can call its own, then woe to it. The things it needs are three: a Lodging Place in heaven above; a Bit of Hardness in the earth beneath; a Last Resort in the waters under the earth. These three--but no life has ever had them.” “In the end,” I said, “when all wide roadways come together, and all heavy hearts are alert to know what will happen, then will there not indeed be one grand adjustment, and life and all become at once magnificently relative?” “Never; it can’t be so. Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee, on a day that I felt depressed. X MINNIE MADDERN FISKE