"I cannot realize it," she said, with a deep sigh of relief and content. "The sky looks fairer already. I can imagine how bright this world is to those who are happy. You do not know how I have longed for some share of its happiness, Claude. All my heart used to cry out for warmth and love, for youth and life. In that dull, gloomy house I have pined away. See, I am as thirsty to enjoy life as the deer on a hot day is to enjoy a running stream. It would be cruel to catch that little bird swinging on the boughs and singing so sweetly--it would be cruel to catch that bright bird, to put it in a narrow cage, and to place the cage in a dark, dull room, where never a gleam of sunshine could cheer it--but it is a thousand times more cruel to shut me up in that gloomy house like a prison, with people who are too old to understand what youth is like." "It is cruel," he assented; and then a silence fell over them, broken only by the whispering of the wind. "Do you know," she went on, after a time, "I have been so unhappy that I have wished I were like Undine and had no soul?" Yet, even as she uttered the words, from the books she disliked and found so dreary there came to her floating memories of grand sentences telling of "hearts held in patience," "of endurance that maketh life divine," of aspirations that do not begin and end in earthly happiness. She drove such memories from her. "Lady Vaughan says 'life is made for duty.' Is that all, Claude? One could do one's duty without the light of the sunshine and the fragrance of flowers. Why need the birds sing so sweetly and the blossoms wear a thousand different colors? If life is meant for nothing but plain, dull duty, we do not need starlit nights and dewy evenings, the calm of green woods and the music of the waves. It seems to me that life is meant as much for beauty as for duty." Claude looked eagerly into the lovely face. "You are right," he said, "and yet wrong. Cynthy, life was made for love--nothing else. You are young and beautiful; you ought to enjoy life--and you shall, if you will promise to be my wife." "I do promise," she returned. "I am tired to death of that gloomy house and those gloomy people. I am weary of quiet and dull monotony." His face darkened. "You must not marry me to escape these evils, Hyacinth, but because you love me." "Of course. Well, I have told you all my perplexities, Claude, and you have decided that I love you." He smiled at the childlike simplicity of the words. "Now, Hyacinth, listen to me. You must be my wife, because I love you so dearly that I cannot live without you and because you have promised. Listen, and I will tell you how it must be." Hyacinth Vaughan looked up in her lover's face; there was nothing but the simple wonder of a child in hers--nothing but awakened interest--there was not even the shadow of love.