"That is what I want to know. How could I? How can girls of my sort love so hopelessly beneath us? I've thought and wondered over that question until my brain has almost turned, and the only consolation I find is that I am not the only one. Other women, cleverer than I, have loved the most contemptible of men and have been deceived just as I was. Oh, if he or I had only died before I discovered the truth! If I could have mourned him honorably and felt that my grief was dignified! But I won't allow myself to grieve over him. I tell myself that I am well out of it and that I ought to be glad. But instead of gladness there is a dull, miserable ache in my heart, which I feel even in my sleep. Not for him; I don't mourn for him, but for myself--for my fallen idols and my shattered ideals. What will such men have to answer for? I doubt if I ever can believe in anything human again." "Anything _human_," I repeated gladly. Louise looked down. "He was not omnipotent," she said huskily. "He ruled my heart only, not my soul." "I suppose you have tried to love your husband?" I said. "Tried? Oh, Ruth, I have tried so hard! He is so good to me. He knows everything. Of course I told him. That was why we were married so suddenly. He wished it and urged such excellent reasons, and I had so much respect for him and his wisdom in what is best, that I married him. I thought I could love him. I always thought that if I didn't love--the other one--I should love Norris; but I can't. I believe my power of love is gone forever. I feel sometimes as if the best part of me had been killed--not died of its own accord, but as if it had been murdered." "Poor child!" I said. "Why don't you talk this over with your husband?" "Oh, Ruth, how could I?" "Well, may I talk to you? Will it hurt you?" "Nothing that you would say can hurt me, dear." "Then let me say just this. You have been trying to do in weeks what nature would take years to do. In real life you cannot lose your love and heal your worse than widowed heart and love anew as you would in private theatricals. You have outraged your own delicate sensibilities, but not with your husband's consent. He does not want you to try to love him. No good man does. He wants you to love him because you can't help yourself--because it seems to your heart to be the only natural thing to do. 'When the song's gone out of your life, you can't start another while it's a-ringing in your ears. It's best to have a bit o' silence, and out of that maybe a psalm'll come by and by.'" "Oh, Ruth, dear Ruth, say that again," she cried, turning towards me with tears in her lovely eyes. I repeated it. "How restful to dare to take 'a bit o' silence'!" "No one can prevent you doing so but yourself. Mr. Whitehouse married you to give you just that, confident that he loved you so much that the psalm would come by and by." "I believe he did," said Louise gently, with color rising in her cheeks.