"Oh, my dearest, I don't want to talk of it. I have put off talking of it, day after day, yet you must know that I can only stay a very little longer. Think of it! I came for a month, and I have stayed--how long is it? And father must be getting lonesome; and he so seldom writes, and then tells me little or nothing. And everything must be needing me--" "You extraordinary girl!" exclaimed Fidele, now very wide awake; "I swear I absolutely do not understand you! What do you mean? First you seem--you seem--and then--and then suddenly--" Fidele could not get out her words, for Chloris's hand was across her lips. "Hush!" she pleaded, quite earnestly. "Say nothing about it! When a thing has been spoken it seems to exist! You don't understand--I don't understand either. Who is consistent? Who knows what he wants? Who knows ever what he is doing? How many creatures we crush just walking across the grass! A path opens ahead, we take it blindly, not knowing whither it leads. With good reason we say we grope in the dark. Let us have the grace, then, when a moment's illumination is granted us, to go by its light. You don't know what I mean; I scarcely know myself. But don't try to keep me, dear! Remain at my side every minute that is left of my stay here; see me to the train without the shadow of an adventure--and I will love you all my life!" And a few days later the train that had brought Chloris picked her up again, all flushed with Fidele's last kisses, and flew with her homeward. She looked out of the window with other eyes than those she had first turned upon the mountains. Yet tears were in them, too, as she said, "Good-bye, dears! Your little sister leaves you, made quite well again. But never will she cease to love you. You shall be always in her dreams. And she will come back one day. When God sends her sorrows she will take refuge again with you." All through the first hours of being rushed along across the brilliant fading land, that she looked at, scarcely seeing, she retained a sense of exaltation. She seemed to herself as a sword after the proofs of furnace and ice-brook. She could have laughed to think of the philosopher that was going home in place of the pallid victim of an almost pathological sensibility. The mountains were dwindling to little hills; the latter-year sun was too barely bright: a crude earth-color and a sombre green took place of the angelic vague green and blue and pink of the dewier, earlier period. The plain was opening with its more trivial detail. Chloris's mind descended to its level, and projected itself with a limited emotion into the circumstances of the approaching home-coming. She felt prepared to endure whatever awaited her with grace and dignity; she felt sure, indeed, that she should feel very little. "I have learned the secret of life," she said to herself; "I have weighed and measured everything."