"Yes, I may well," she answered. "And it is the result of the evil practice of thinking. When once you begin, it is not easy to stop. And I think you have begun." "I shall endeavor to get over it," he replied. "No," she said, "don't!" She rose from her seat and stood up before him, trembling, and with two large tears falling upon her cheeks. "Larry," she said, "that is what I wanted to say--that is what I have been thinking of. I shall not say it well, because we have laughed at each other so long that it is not easy to speak of anything seriously; but I must try. See! I am tired of laughing. I have come to the time when there seems to be nothing left but tears--and there is no help; but you are different, and if you are tired too, and if there is anything you want, even if you could not be sure of having it, it would be better to be trying to earn it, and to be worthy of it." He rested his forehead on his hands, and kept his eyes fixed on the carpet. "That is a very exalted way of looking at things," he said, in a low voice. "I am afraid I am not equal to it." "In the long nights, when I have lain awake and thought so," she went on, "I have seemed to find out that--there were things worth altering all one's life for. I did not want to believe in them at first, but now it is different with me. I could not say so to any one but you--and perhaps not to you to-morrow or the day after--and you will hear me laugh and jeer many a time again. That is my fate; but it need not be yours. Your life is your own. If mine were my own--oh, if mine were my own!" She checked the passionate exclamation with an effort. "When one's life belongs to one's self," she added, "one can do almost anything with it!" "I have not found it so," he replied. "You have never tried it," she said. "One does not think of these things until the day comes when there is a reason--a reason for everything--for pain and gladness, for hope and despair, for the longing to be better and the struggle against being worse. Oh, how can one give up when there is such a reason, and one's life is in one's own hands! I am saying it very badly, Larry, I know that. Agnes Sylvestre could say it better, though she could not mean it more." "She would not take the trouble to say it at all," he said. Bertha drew back a pace with an involuntary movement. The repressed ring of bitterness in the words had said a great deal. "Is it--?" she exclaimed, involuntarily, as she had moved, and then stopped. "I said I would not ask questions," she added, and clasped her hands behind her back, standing quite still, in an attitude curiously expressive of agitation and suspense. "What!" he said; "have I told you? I was afraid I should. Yes, it is Mrs. Sylvestre who has disturbed me; it is Mrs. Sylvestre who has stirred the calm of ages." She was silent a second, and when she spoke her eyes looked very large and bright.