“Ernest, if you talk to me like that, I will go away, and leave you to find your own way home. I know well of whom you have been thinking every day and every night. It was not of me. Now, confess it.” “Don’t let’s talk of _her,_ Doll. If you talk of the devil, you know, you sometimes raise him; not that he requires much raising in this instance,” he laughed bitterly. “I was so sorry for you, Ernest dear, and I did my best; indeed I did. But I could do nothing with her. She must have been off her head, or that man” (Dorothy always spoke of Plowden as ‘that man’)” and Florence had some power over her; or perhaps she never really cared for you; there are some women, you know, who seem very sweet, but cannot truly care for anybody except themselves. At any rate, she married, and has a family of children, for I have seen their births in the paper. Oh, Ernest, when I think of all you must have suffered out there about that woman, I cease to be sorry for her, and begin to hate her. I am afraid you have been very unhappy, Ernest, all these years.” “Ah, yes, I have been unhappy sometimes—sometimes I have consoled myself. There, what is the use of telling lies?—I have always been unhappy, and never so much so as when I have been in process of consolation. But you should not hate her, poor girl! Perhaps she has her bad times too; only, fortunately, you women cannot feel, at least not much—not like us, I mean.” “I don’t know about that,” put in Dorothy. “Well, I will qualify my remark—most women. And, besides, it is not quite her fault; people cannot help themselves much in this world. She was appointed to be my evil destiny, that is all, and she must fulfil her mission. All my life she will probably bring me trouble, till at last the fate works itself out. But, Dolly, my dear, there must be an end to these things, and Nature, always fertile in analogies, teaches us that the end of sorrow will be happiness. It is from the darkness of night that day is born, and ice and snow are followed by the flowers. Nothing is lost in the world, as old Alston used to say, and it is impossible to suppose that all the grief and suffering are alone wasted; that they are the only dull seed that will not, when their day comes, bloom into a beautiful life. They may seem to be intangible things now; but, after all, the difference between tangible and intangible is only a difference of matter. We know that intangible things are real enough, and perhaps in a future state we shall find that they are the true immortal parts. I think so myself.” “I think so too.” “Well, then, Doll, you see, if once one gets the mastery of that idea, it makes the navigation easier. Once admit that everything works to an end, and that end a good and enduring one, and you will cease to call out under your present sorrows. But it is hard for the little boy to learn to like being whipped, and we are all children, Doll, to the end of our days.” “Yes.”