“Mr. Wingfold says it is always going righter the same time it is going wrong.  I grant He would have had no right to make a world that might go further wrong than He could set right at His own cost.  But if at His own cost He turn its ills into goods? its ugliness into favor?  Ah, if it should be so, Juliet!  It may be so.  I do not know.  I have not found Him yet.  Help me to find Him.  Let us seek Him together.  If you find Him you can not lose your husband.  If Love is Lord of the world, love must yet be Lord in his heart.  It will wake, if not sooner, yet when the bitterness has worn itself out, as Mr. Wingfold says all evil must, because its heart is death and not life.”

“I don’t care a straw for life.  If I could but find my husband, I would gladly die forever in his arms.  It is not true that the soul longs for immortality.  I don’t.  I long only for love—­for forgiveness—­for my husband.”

“But would you die so long as there was the poorest chance of regaining your place in his heart?”

“No.  Give me the feeblest chance of that, and I will live.  I could live forever on the mere hope of it.”

“I can’t give you any hope, but I have hope of it in my own heart.”

Juliet rose on her elbow.

“But I am disgraced!” she said, almost indignantly.  “It would be disgrace to him to take me again!  I remember one of the officers’ wives——.  No, no! he hates and despises me.  Besides I could never look one of his friends in the face again.  Every body will say I ran away with some one—­or that he sent me away because I was wicked.  You all had a prejudice against me from the very first.”

“Yes, in a way,” confessed Dorothy.  “It always seemed as if we did not know you and could not get at you, as if you avoided us—­with your heart, I mean;—­as if you had resolved we should not know you—­as if you had something you were afraid we should discover.”

“Ah, there it was, you see!” cried Juliet.  “And now the hidden thing is revealed!  That was it:  I never could get rid of the secret that was gnawing at my life.  Even when I was hardly aware of it, it was there.  Oh, if I had only been ugly, then Paul would never have thought of me!”

She threw herself down again and buried her face.

“Hide me; hide me,” she went on, lifting to Dorothy her hands clasped in an agony, while her face continued turned from her.  “Let me stay here.  Let me die in peace.  Nobody would ever think I was here.”

“That is just what has been coming and going in my mind,” answered Dorothy.  “It is a strange old place:  you might be here for months and nobody know.”

“Oh! wouldn’t you mind it?  I shouldn’t live long.  I couldn’t, you know!”

“I will be your very sister, if you will let me,” replied Dorothy; “only then you must do what I tell you—­and begin at once by promising not to leave the house till I come back to you.”

As she spoke she rose.