Yet as he sat gazing, in the broad light of day, through the cottage window, across whose panes waved the little red bells of the common fuchsia, something that had nothing to do with science and yet was, seemed to linger and hover over the little garden—­something from the very depths of loveliest folly.  Was it the refrain of an old song? or the smell of withered rose leaves? or was there indeed a kind of light such as never was on sea or shore?

Whatever it was, it was out of the midst of it the voice of the lady seemed to come—­a clear musical voice in common speech, but now veiled and trembling, as if it brooded hearkening over the words it uttered: 

  “I wrong the grave with fears untrue: 
  Shall love be blamed for want of faith? 
  There must be wisdom with great Death: 
  The dead shall look me through and through.

  “Be near us when we climb or fall: 
  Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
  With larger other eyes than ours,
    To make allowance for us all.”

She ceased, and the silence was like that which follows sweet music.

“Ah! you think of your father!” he hazarded, and hoped indeed it was her father of whom she was thinking.

She made no answer.  He turned toward her in anxiety.  She was struggling with emotion.  The next instant the tears gushed into her eyes, while a smile seemed to struggle from her lips, and spread a little way over her face.  It was inexpressibly touching.

“He was my friend,” she said.  “I shall never have such love again.”

“All is not lost when much is lost,” said the doctor, with sad comfort.  “There are spring days in winter.”

“And you don’t like poetry!” she said, a sweet playful scorn shining through her tears.

“I spoke but a sober truth,” he returned; “—­so sober that it seems but the sadder for its truth.  The struggle of life is to make the best of things that might be worse.”

She looked at him pitifully.  For a moment her lips parted, then a strange look as of sudden bodily pain crossed her face, her lips closed, and her mouth looked as if it were locked.  She shut the book which lay upon her knee, and resumed her needlework.  A shadow settled upon her face.

“What a pity such a woman should be wasted in believing lies!” thought the doctor.  “How much better it would be if she would look things in the face, and resolve to live as she can, doing her best and enduring her worst, and waiting for the end!  And yet, seeing color is not the thing itself, and only in the brain whose eye looks upon it, why should I think it better? why should she not shine in the color of her fancy? why should she grow gray because the color is only in herself?  We are but bubbles flying from the round of Nature’s mill-wheel.  Our joys and griefs are the colors that play upon the bubbles.  Their throbs and ripples and changes are our music and poetry, and their bursting is our endless repose.  Let us waver and float and shine in the sun; let us bear pitifully and be kind; for the night cometh, and there an end.”