As Louise and I walked up and down I took in mine the small hand which emerged from the great fur cuff of her boat cloak, and gradually its rigidity relaxed under my friendly pressure. I remembered, as I occasionally tightened my grasp upon it, that my dear little baby sister Lois, who was taken away from us before she outgrew her babyhood, used to squeeze my hand in this fashion, and when I asked her what it meant, she invariably said, "It means dat it loves you." I wondered if the same inarticulate language could be conveyed to poor, suffering Louise. Suddenly she turned to me and said, "You have thrown something gentle, a softness around me this morning. I can feel it. What is it, Ruth?" "I don't know, dear, unless it is my love for you." "It is something more. Your eyes look into mine as if you knew all about it and wished to comfort me." As I made no answer, she turned and looked down at me from her superb height. "Tell me," she said quite gently; "I shall not be angry. Tell me, _do_ you know?" "Yes, Louise, I know." She hesitated a moment as if she really had not believed it. Then she said slowly, "If any other person on earth except you had told me that, I should die. I could not live in the knowledge. But you--well, your pity is not an insult somehow." "Because it is not pity, Louise," I said steadily. "There is a difference between pity and sympathy. One is thrown at you--the other walks with you." She only pressed my hand gratefully. Suddenly she turned and said impulsively, "Then you must know how utterly wretched I am." Glancing over her shoulder I could see the eyes of her husband fastened upon her with an expression which stirred me to put forth my best efforts. Then it came over me how pent-up all this intensity of feeling must be. I realized how impossible it would seem to her to speak of it. Taking my life in my hand--for I was mortally afraid--I rushed in, after the manner of my kind, where angels fear to tread. "Did you love him then so much?" The pupils of her eyes enlarged until they were all black with excitement. She caught both my hands in hers. "Only God Himself knows how I loved him," she whispered. I knew then that all Charlie had said was true, and, weak coward that I was, if I could have undone the past, I would have given him back to her. I was borne away by a glimpse of such love. O Charlie Hardy! And you cast this from you for a pair of blue eyes! "How came you to love such a weak man?" I asked tremblingly.