It was now a little past the time of year when Redmond and Harry Lothrop had left us,--early autumn. After their departure, Laura and I had been sentimental enough to talk over the events of their visit. Recalling these associations, we created an illusion of pleasure which of course could not last. Harry Lothrop wrote to Laura, but the correspondence declined and died. As time passed on, we talked less and less of our visitors, and finally ceased to speak of them. Neither of us knew or suspected the other of any deep or lasting feeling toward the two friends. Laura knew Redmond better than I did; at least, she saw him oftener; in fact, she knew both in a different way. They had visited her alone; while I had met them almost entirely in society. I never found so much time to spare as she seemed to have; for everybody liked her, and everybody sought her. As often as we had talked over our acquaintance, she was wary of speaking of Redmond. Her last conversation with me revealed her thoughts, and awakened feelings which I thought I had buffeted down. The tone of Harry Lothrop's note perplexed me, and I found myself drifting back into an old state of mind I had reason to dread. As I said, the autumn had come round. Its quiet days, its sombre nights, filled my soul with melancholy. The lonesome moan of the sea and the waiting stillness of the woods were just the same a year ago; but Laura was dead, and Nature grieved me. Yet none of us are in one mood long, and at this very time there were intervals when I found something delicious in life, either in myself or the atmosphere. "Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams." A golden morning, a starry night, the azure round of the sky, the undulating horizon of sea, the blue haze which rose and fell over the distant hills, the freshness of youth, the power of beauty,--all gave me deep voluptuous dreams. I can afford to confess that I possessed beauty; for half my faults and miseries arose from the fact of my being beautiful. I was not vain, but as conscious of my beauty as I was of that of a flower, and sometimes it intoxicated me. For, in spite of the comforting novels of the Jane Eyre school, it is hardly possible to set an undue value upon beauty; it defies ennui. As I expected, Harry Lothrop came to see me. The sad remembrance of Laura's death prevented any ceremony between us; we met as old acquaintances, of course, although we had never conversed together half an hour without interruption. I began with the theme of Laura's illness and death, and the relation which she had held toward me. All at once I discovered, without evidence, that he was indifferent to what I was saying; but I talked on mechanically, and like a phantasm the truth came to my mind. The real man was there,--not the one I had carelessly looked at and known through Laura. I became silent. He twisted his fingers in the fringe of my scarf, which had fallen off, and I watched them.