infinitely beautiful, patient, strong, and they uphold me. I cannot think they suffer with me; their wisdom is too great. But they crowd about me silently, forbearingly, divinely. They are incarnate love. I stretch out my hands to them. While they stay, I am almost happy. I do not see them, yet they shed a lustre and the soul perceives it. I have learned--what have I learned? Obedience. I must not strive nor cry. I must serve. What? I do not know. But I must serve, even in the dark and enchained. I am content to grope, with my eyes bandaged. Content? No, this is joy. I have tasted God. I drink no other spring. I have read this over. It is all wrong, all poor and pale; I have told nothing. Yet the visions--they are in my soul. I throw my arms about them and hold them fast. Perhaps even they must be withdrawn. Perhaps it is a part of my service to lose my way. Even that I accept. I reach my hand for the cup--thirstily. I drink, and to the Unknown God. What is He? I am contented not to know. What am I? It is His will I should not know. Only this: the soul is perfect, indestructible, and she goes to lave herself in Him. * * * * * The next morning, said Pierre, Francis made swift preparations for going away. They were few, for he wished to retain nothing belonging to his former life. He took last long looks about the walls, he studied the pictures as if he would learn them by heart, and laid his hand upon one and another of the things that had been dear to him. Then he touched fire to the building, and stood by outside, waiting while it burned. Pierre very plainly understood why he did it, though he could not tell. He seemed to distrust the quality of my intelligence because I asked primitive questions. Was it because Francis feared marauders? Was it some idea of sacrifice to his father's memory? Was it because he felt himself unworthy to retain the precious surroundings of a life to which he had been false? As I became insistent, Pierre grew dumb. The cabin burned, he said. Francis watched it. Then he went away. He never came back. In the old man's countenance I fancied I could trace, under a veiling patience, the lines of an immortal grief. Francis, I could understand, had been the child of his heart, his one human love. It had taken all the great austerity of the forest to teach him to bear that loss. Yet you could see from his face, as in the faces of so many who suffer with dignity, that he was not destitute of hope.