"Our ideals are broken and left behind," she went on. "Only the invalid knows how true _that_ is. Dear me! When I think of all the high ideals I had when I was your age, Annette, who don't seem to have any! But perhaps it is happier for you that you haven't. Though Mr. Stirling looks so strong I feel sure that he must at one time have known a sofa-life. Or perhaps he loved some one like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was as great a prisoner to her couch as I am. He simply couldn't have written those lines otherwise. I often think as I lie here in solitude, hour after hour, how different my life might have been if anyone like Browning had sought me out--had---- But it's no use repining: all these things are ordered for the best. Go on, my dear, go on." When the reading was over and Aunt Harriet, still emotional, had gone to bed, after embracing them both with unusual fervour, Annette opened the window as her custom was, and let in the soft night air. Aunt Harriet was a lifelong foe to fresh air. Aunt Maria gave a sigh of relief. She was stout and felt the heat. The earth was resting. The white pinks below the window gave forth their scent. The low moon had laid a slanting black shadow of the dear old house and its tall chimney-stacks upon the silvered grass. Annette's heart throbbed. Must she leave it all? She longed to go to her own room and think over what had happened, but she had an intuitive feeling that Aunt Maria had been in some mysterious way depressed by the reading aloud, and was in need of consolation. "I think," said Aunt Maria after a time, "that Mr. Stirling rather exaggerates, don't you?--that he has yielded to the temptation of picturesque overstatement in that bit about following Self." "It seems to me--just right." "You don't feel he is writing for the sake of effect?" "No. Oh no." "I am afraid I do a little. But then the picture is so very highly coloured, and personally I don't care much for garish colouring." Annette did not answer. "I should like to know what you think about it, Annette." Whenever Aunt Maria used that phrase, she wanted confirmation of her own opinion. Annette considered a moment. "I think he has really seen it exactly as he says. I think perhaps he was selfish once, and--and had a shock." "He is quite right to write from his experience," continued Aunt Maria. "I have drawn largely from mine in my books, and I am thankful I have had such a deep and rich experience to draw from. Experience, of course, must vary with each one of us. But I can't say I have ever felt what he describes. Have you?" "Yes." "The veiled figure meeting you in a narrow place and raising its veil?" "Yes." Aunt Maria was momentarily taken aback. When our opinions do not receive confirmation from others we generally feel impelled to restate them at length.