“Forty years ago,” he said, sadly, “the friend of my boyhood deceived me. I had not thought it possible that he could be false to me. He screened himself behind me, and became prosperous and respected at the expense of my honour. I vowed I would never again make a friend. A few years later, when I was beginning to hold up my head, the woman whom I loved deceived me. Then I put from me all affection and all love. Greater natures than mine are better able to bear these troubles, but my heart contracted and withered up.” He paused for a moment, many recollections overpowering him. Then he went on telling her the history of his life, unfolding to her the story of his hopes and ambitions, describing to her the very home where he was born, and the dark-eyed sister whom he had loved, and with whom he had played over the daisied fields, and through the carpeted woods, and all among the richly tinted bracken. One day he was told she was dead, and that he must never speak her name; but he spoke it all the day and all the night,--Beryl, nothing but Beryl,--and he looked for her in the fields and in the woods and among the bracken. It seemed as if he had unlocked the casket of his heart, closed for so many years, and as if all the memories of the past and all the secrets of his life were rushing out, glad to be free once more, and grateful for the open air of sympathy. “Beryl was as swift as a deer!” he exclaimed. “You would have laughed to see her on the moor. Ah, it was hard to give up all the thoughts of meeting her again. They told me I should see her in heaven, but I did not care about heaven. I wanted Beryl on earth, as I knew her, a merry laughing sister. I think you are right: we don’t forget; we become resigned in a dead, dull kind of way.” Suddenly he said, “I don’t know why I have told you all this. And yet it has been such a pleasure to me. You are the only person to whom I could have spoken about myself, for no one else but you would have cared.” “Don’t you think,” she said gently, “that you made a mistake in letting your experiences embitter you? Because you had been unlucky in one or two instances it did not follow that all the world was against you. Perhaps you unconsciously put yourself against all the world, and therefore saw every one in an unfavourable light. It seems so easy to do that. Trouble comes to most people, doesn’t it? And your philosophy should have taught you to make the best of it. At least, that is my notion of the value of philosophy.” She spoke hesitatingly, as though she gave utterance to these words against her will. “I am sure you are right, child,” he said, eagerly. He put his hands to his eyes, but he could not keep back the tears. “I have been such a lonely old man,” he sobbed; “no one can tell what a lonely, loveless life mine has been. If I were not so old and so tired I should like to begin all over again.”