'The pleased expression remained for a moment, and then an intensely black cloud fell upon her countenance. She said nothing more, and in a few minutes went away. You see how it was--by one of those freaks by which the imagination loves to torture us, my remark recalled her whole misery and its unalterable cause, and having lost for the time the keynote to her new-found joy, the other took entire possession of her mind and overwhelmed it. In a few days she came back to me, and I said: 'I pained you when you were here before. I do not know how, but I am very sorry.' 'You did pain me, but you were entirely innocent. Afterward it grieved me still more that I _was_ pained--that what you said had the _power_ to pain me. I will tell you all, if you will hear it;' and, without waiting for my answer, she gave me the key to the last two years of her life. 'She finished, but I had nothing to reply. She had said all. Hitherto I had led her, but now her experience was deeper than mine. Besides, I could then less than ever understand the life that was opening before her, for I had just yielded my heart and promised my hand to one whom I loved; and though I by no means thought it impossible that she, too, might have tried the same path, yet I knew she thought so; and I could not conceive how she could look forward with contentment to a life in which that element of happiness was wanting. I could only assure her of my own warm affection, an assurance which gave her a pleasure that it always makes me happy to think of. 'Notwithstanding the apparently contradictory evidence of her late depression, her new experience was not precarious and uncertain: it was firm, enduring, to be _rested_ upon in the most trying emergencies; yet it was not, for many years, unwavering. During all that period of a woman's life when looks and manners pass for so much, and the real character for so little, she suffered at times greatly. As she went onward, every new phase of the feelings which possess a girl's heart brought with it its own pang, and each had to be overcome, some by stifling, some by postponement to another existence, and others by studying to dissever, if possible, the essential sentiment from the shows in which it was imbedded. She was unwilling passively to outgrow her trials, feeling that thereby she would lose the strength they were intended to give. Her work, however, helped her more than anything. She was not eager to enter upon it. She did not stretch forth impatient, unskilled hands toward what her Father had designed for her. Entirely confident, she was right, she was at ease, knowing her work would come to her in the proper time, and it did.