"Hush, Alan, hush!" I cried hysterically, as I clung to him; "don't speak harshly of her: you do not know, you cannot tell, how terribly she was tempted. How can you?" He looked down at me in bewildered surprise. "How can I?" he repeated. "You speak as if YOU could. What do you mean?" "Don't ask me," I answered, turning towards him my face,--white, quivering, tear-stained. "Don't ask me. Not now. You must answer my questions first, and after that I will tell you. But I cannot talk of it now. Not yet." We had reached the place we were in search of as I spoke. There, where the spreading roots of a great beech-tree formed a natural resting place upon the steep side of the ravine, I took my seat, and Alan stretched himself upon the grass beside me. Then looking up at me--"I do not know what questions you would ask," he said, quietly; "but I will answer them, whatever they may be." But I did not ask them yet. I sat instead with my hands clasping my knee, looking opposite at the glory of harmonious color, or down the glen at the vista of far-off, dream-like loveliness, on which it opened out. The yellow autumn sunshine made everything golden, the fresh autumn breezes filled the air with life; but to me a loathsome shadow seemed to rest upon all, and to stretch itself out far beyond where my eyes could reach, befouling the beauty of the whole wide world. At last I spoke. "You have known of it all, I suppose; of this curse that is in the world,--sin and suffering, and what such words mean." "Yes," he said, looking at me with wondering pity, "I am afraid so." "But have you known them as they are known to some,--agonized, hopeless suffering, and sin that is all but inevitable? Some time in your life probably you have realized that such things are: it has come home to you, and to every one else, no doubt, except a few ignorant girls such as I was yesterday. But there are some,--yes, thousands and thousands,--who even now, at this moment, are feeling sorrow like that, are sinking deep, deeper into the bottomless pit of their soul's degradation. And yet men who know this, who have seen it, laugh, talk, are happy, amuse themselves--how can they, how can they?" I stopped with a catch in my voice, and then stretching out my arms in front of me--"And it is not only men. Look how beautiful the earth is, and God has made it, and lets the sun crown it every day with a new glory, while this horror of evil broods over and poisons it all. Oh, why is it so? I cannot understand it."