Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/243

 before, of that which will one day open wondrously for you."

"I did not agree to that, you know," said I.

"Well, then, I agreed to it for both of us," said my friend Annabel Lee. "And your verse betrays that so plainly that one is led to feel that there are persons who grow more hopeful with each bit of darkness that comes to them. If your life were all fire and sunshine you would write very different verse. And if it told anything at all it would tell that while you looked forward to still more fire and sunshine, you would somehow know you were not really to have any more, but that it would grow less and less in the years, and by the time you were an old lady, and still not nearly ready to die, it would give out entirely."

"That would be by the law of compensation," said I. "And it would require