"Oh," said the other, quickly, turning away as if she had been hurt. For a moment the childless woman envied the other her grave. Half a mile from the Fort, in a hollow near the river, was a little mound, marked only by a rude slab of limestone and the willow that grew above it. At the sight of it her eyes filled. "Oh, Baby," she sobbed, pressing her face against the cold turf above him, "I wish I was down there beside you, as still and as dreamless as you! You don't know what it means--you never would have known! Oh, I'd rather be a stone than a woman with a heart!" "Katherine!" cried a man's voice beside her; "Katherine!" Norton's arm lifted her from the grave and held her close. "Dear heart," he said, "is the world unkind?" She drew away from him, but he still held her cold hand in his. "My heart aches for you, Katherine--can't you tell me?" "You never lost a child," she whispered, clutching at the straw. "That is true, but I have lost far more. I----" He stopped and bit his lips upon the words that struggled for utterance. "Come away," he said, gently. He led her to the bank of the stream, where they sat down under a tree. She leaned against it, unconscious that he still held her hand. There was a long silence, in which she regained, in some measure, her self-control. "I can't think what's wrong with me," she sighed. "I've cried more in the last six months than in all my life before. I'm not the crying kind--naturally, that is." "Don't think about that, for nature knows a great deal more than we do. Cry all you want to, and thank God you have no grief beyond the reach of tears." "Beyond--tears?" "Yes; there is another kind, which I am glad you do not know. It cuts and burns and stings till it is the very refinement of torture, and there is no veil of mist to blind the eyes." She looked at him curiously. "You----?" "Yes," he answered, with his head bowed; "that is the kind of grief I know the best." "I--I'm sorry," she said, stirred to pity. "Why should you be sorry for me?" he asked, with a rare smile. "There are countless joys in the world, but the griefs are few and old. The humblest of us can find new happiness, but there has been no increase of sorrow since the world was first made. There is a fixed and unvariable quantity of it, and we take turns bearing it--that's all. Nothing comes to any of us that some one before us has not met like a soldier, bravely and well." "You are strong, but I have no strength." "There are different kinds of strength, Katherine, and of these the one most to be prized is what we call endurance, for lack of a better word. One can always bear a little more, for we live only one day at a time, and to-morrow may bring us new gifts of which we do not dream."