"It is all very hard, I know," she answered; "but from the lowest abyss one can still see the sky overhead. People's hearts are touched by the spectacle of sin or the spectacle of suffering. Our Lord could not sin, therefore He reached our sympathies by His Death and Sorrows. Of course, if this life here were all, and this world were the only one, and we were animals with less beauty than many of the inanimate things in nature, and as much intelligence at best as the bees and birds and ants--then the Pagan way might be quite admirable. But this isn't the case, and so--and so----" Sara laughed. "We are a grotesque compromise between gods and creatures," she said; "those of us who find this out get a little impatient with the false position. You are less sentimental than I am. You take what I call the hard view. It is too frigid for me. But I am making you late. All good luck to-night!" She waved her hand, and, returning to her own room, realised that she had missed the object of her conversation. The attempt to excite Brigit's jealousy had failed. Nothing is so infectious as despair. Brigit sat quivering under the echo of Sara's last words: "You take what I call the hard view." Was it, then, such an easy matter to bury love in perpetual silence, to let nature yield to fate, to stifle every human craving? The mention of Robert's name and the news that he looked ill and careworn had stirred all the unshed tears in her heart; she could not think, she could not move, she could but realise that she had no right to be with him. And sorrow seemed her province. There, surely, she and he might meet, join hands, and speak once more face to face. She had not written to him since that parting at Miraflores. But she would write now. This was her letter--