away her life like that, ignorantly, meets with some other who would have suited her? Ah! what ugly words those are, ' too late!' They always make me think of Balzac and the dream that ran through his toiling, barren life of the tender woman's hands that should one day smooth the hair back from his weary brow, and say, 'Poor soul, thou hast suffered!' They came to him at last, too late."
"Do you know," says Paul, "that you have the saddest face sometimes, child, that I ever saw?"
"Do I look like a girl who is going to have a miserable story!' I ask, stopping short; "do I look like a girl who is going to die young?"
He takes my two hands in his, and looks down with infinite gentleness on my pale, scared face.
"God forbid!" he says gently.
"Do not think me a very great coward: do not despise me," I say, shivering; "but I so fear death. I have such a bodily horror and shrinking away from it, not for what it brings, but because I so dread to go away, to be caught out of this warm, beautiful earth that I know, and away from all the people and things I love. I enjoy my life so keenly that I could not bear to let it go. Do you think I shall be punished? Is it impious to feel like this?"
"You sweet little soul!" he says, in his strong, tender voice, "you be punished for aught in your fair young life? I wonder what God would reserve for sinners such as I, then?"
"You are not a sinner," I say stoutly, looking into his noble face—a face that gives so much more promise of grand things than he has ever worked in his life yet. "You are good."
I loose my hands from his, and we walk on again side by side.
"Do you know," I say laughing (Why does laughter often follow so quickly on the heels of sighs?), "that if I know you long I shall
