“Well?" and Claude's intense eyes were fixed upon Dana with a strange glitter.

"When a man's first passion-dreams are blighted, intellectual natures are prone to seek refuge in a stern, solitary existence, and look scornfully down on their fellow-creatures still groping on the illusive sea-shore for the great joys of life. And for sensuous natures is the greater danger of rushing madly to their own destruction - of allowing themselves to be tempted beyond what they are able to bear. I tell you, Claude, I have a strange pity for such as go down to the flames of the bottomless pit before their time, stifled with misery, plunging madly after the light, and yet missing it, and swelling the list of those who were too weak for destiny."

"We can never quite save our own souls from their grasp," Claude said, with a quick shiver. "For the wrong-doing of others often changes our lives as surely as if we did it ourselves. It is a mistake to say those who sin suffer the most. Heaven only knows how we suffer for them!"

"I think it is meant to bring us nearer the One who suffered for the whole world. If they were all in his eyes worth dying for, shall we refuse to stretch out a helping hand? We are to bear one another's burdens.' At the last God will make it clear."

Claude placed his hand over his eyes. He had borne a burden proudly; had it been done with the great love that hallows all things, and makes them stepping-stones to a higher state?

They had floated silently down, until the dense shadows of the bridge loomed up before them. Now the moon was in midheaven; the river showed distinctly from edge to edge; every tree, shrub, and rock stood out like basso-relievo, or the wondrous minuteness of a stereoscope.

"How the moments have flown," Dana said, glancing over the peaceful earth and the wide, untroubled sky. "And our life goes like it. When we see the golden sand slipping from be

neath our feet, is it any wonder that we long for one draught of joy so keen that it fills and satisfies every pulse? I used to think I should never feel content to die until I had been perfectly happy, if but for an hour only."

"And now?

that the other could not read.

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"The old longing still;" and a fathomless tenderness suffused Dana's eyes. Is happiness a dream? I cannot believe it. Just so surely as I feel capable of satisfying some other soul, I know there is one that can answer to the needs of mine. Will God keep us forever apart?"

The voice sank to a pathos that thrilled Claude. His lips were compressed, and his eyes seemed piercing the dim future like points of flame. Had he been brought under this powerful influence for no purpose save torture? been given a glorious vision, only to make the reality more bitterly dark?

Dana seized the unused oar, and brought the boat around to the gravelly shore. "One could linger here forever," he said; "but not to-night. We shall come again."

Like one in a trance, Claude stepped on the solid ground; but it seemed to quiver beneath his feet. The hill was again ascended, and they paused to view the scene from these heights. The waves, crested with a thousand points of light, the clustering banks, with their weird shade, and the transcendent, beautiful night. They understood each other so well that silence was as satisfying as words. One had shown his heart to his friend as he had never been moved to show it before, and the other had taken it into sacred keeping.

The dainty wagon, with its superb grays, was at hand. They drove slowly homeward, the streets in this vicinity hardly less quiet than the silvery river.

At the cottage, Dana paused, with the reins in one hand, though the perfectly trained horses scarcely needed any restraint besides their master's voice.

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Claude," he said, with that rare inflection one uses only in the

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great moments of life, my soul summons yours. Will you still resist? For you satisfy me, or can if you will; and perhaps no other love, so pure, so deep, may ever come to us. Would it not be folly to cast it aside? For there is nothing but what I could give and do for you. As you value your soul's peace, fail me not now nor ever!"

He bowed his head to look into the other's eyes, which, since they could not be averted, were half closed. What glory was shining in their hidden depths? What revelation was in this rapid, fluttering breath?

With a sudden gesture, Claude's lips touched his cheek. So passionless, indeed, was the caress, that had Dana been less spiritualized, he could not have kindled at a contact icily cold, that seemed to penetrate his brain like some strain of halfremembered music, heard in one of the magical hours of life,heard, indeed, to be never forgotten.

He moved a trifle, and a wandering smile, half sad, half siren-like, crossed his face, like the trail of some dreamy cloud floating across the moon. His voice was low, yet tremulous with a possibility of rapture, as he said,

"If I had won a woman's heart, she would have kissed me on the mouth."

For an instant, brief as a flash of light, their lips met. Dana was conscious of a wild impulse that stirred his soul, and yet held it in powerful thrall, beyond present deliverance. He could neither move nor speak. He seemed trying, in a blind way, to gain the clew to some mystery that touched the very springs of his being with the profoundest passion he had ever known.

Claude darted out on the sidewalk. With a good night, that was half smothered in a thrill of agony, he flashed up the steps and disappeared. Through the house, with a noiseless treadinto his studio, where he shut out every possible ray of light. Then he groped his way to a chair, and throwing himself on the floor, buried his face amid the cushions. A storm of in

ward sobs shook his frame, but no sound escaped the rigid lips. In this great trial-hour all outward signs were impotent. There are times when a thousand pangs seem concentrated in one human soul, as if it made up by its suffering the deficiency of many others. And, though the hours until morning were but few, centuries appeared to pass over him.

In the gray light of dawn he rose, deathly pale, but calm as one who has reached the furthest bound of pain, passed through waves of anguish, whose very force crushes a weak soul, but leaves the strong one still and calm. The cold lips murmured,

"When I am gone he shall know the truth, and judge me by it."

X.

THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS.

MRS. TRESORIER had consulted Dr. Mercer about her child. He caught himself indulging in a series of speculations, at which his medical brethren would have smiled. He watched the mother, glowing with that intense, absorbing vitality, the vitality that drew continual nourishment from everything that came within its sphere correspondingly fine, yet weaker and lesser. A nature profoundly passionate, tender in its moods, yet never moved by any pure, self-denying affection. Whatever ministered to her, she loved. Had the child lacked grace or beauty, been cast in any ordinary material mould, and wakened slowly to intelligence, she would never have cared so to absorb it into herself. Could he make her understand the danger?

He saw its proximity but dimly himself. Not being conversant with their lives, he could only judge from a few outward points. He questioned her closely.

"I think the child is well enough," she said, half pettishly. "Or, at least, he is not sick; if he were he would fret. He did when he was teething. And, though he seems delicate, he is large of his age. It was because another person was anxious.” "Does he sleep well?

"O, yes. He is seldom restless. He is always languid in the summer, and loses his appetite; but he doesn't seem to mind it."

"He needs a thorough change. If you could send him away with a good nurse

"Send him away!" she exclaimed, aghast. "Why, he has