Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/305

 t down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice floating by.

"Uncle John will never expect us to-night, Alice."

"I cannot help it,--I must go; for I shall never be satisfied without one good talk with him before I leave, and Herbert will never spare me another evening. Besides, Uncle John will be only too glad to see us in this suicidal weather, as he will call it." And she sprang upon the boat, laughing at my woebegone face.

"You are glad to see us here, Uncle John,--glad we came in spite of the fog, and sleet, and ice, and Kate's long face. How anybody can have a long face because of the weather, I cannot understand,--or, indeed, why there should be long faces at all in the world, when everything is so gloriously full of life."

"How many years is it, Alice,--three, I think,--since you were tired of living, found life so wearisome?"

"Yes, just about three years since Kate and I ran away from Laura C.'s party and came over here to ask you to help us out of our stupidity. I remember it all,--how you puzzled me by telling me that every position in life had its sameness. Ah, Uncle John, you forgot one thing when you told me that nothing satisfied us in this world." And Alice looked up from her little stool, where she sat before the fire at Uncle John's feet, with the flush of deep feeling coloring her cheeks and the dewy light of happiness in her eyes.

"And that one thing, Alice?"

"You are lying in wait for my answer, to give it that smile that I hate,--it is so unbelieving and so sad; I will not have you wear it on your face to-night, Uncle John. You cannot, if I speak my whole heart out. And why should I not, before you and Kate,--Kate, who is like my other self, and you, dear Uncle John, who, ever since the time we were talking about, have been so much to me? Do you know, I never told anybody before? but all you said that night never left me. I thought of it so much! Was it true that life was so dissatisfying? You who had tried so thoroughly, who had gone through such a life of adventure, had seemed to me really to live, was all as flat and unprofitable to you as one of our tiresome parties or morning calls? And something in my own heart told me it was true, something that haunted me all through my greatest enjoyments, through my studies that I took up then, and which have been to me, oh, Uncle John, so much more than ever I expected they would be! Yes, through all that I believed you, believed you till now, believed you till I knew Herbert."

"And has Herbert told you better?"

"Uncle John, you do not know how the whole of life is glorified for me,--glorified by his love. I do not deserve it; all I can do is to return it ten-fold; but this I know, that, while I keep it, there can be nothing tame or dull,--life, everything, is gilded by my own happiness."

"And if you lose it?"

The flush on her face fell. "I should be miserable!--I should not--no, I could not live any longer!"

"Alice," said Uncle John, his face losing its half-mocking smile with which he had been watching her eager countenance, "Alice, did you know that I had been married?"

We started. "Married? No. How was it, and when?"

"It is no matter now, my girls. Some time I may tell you about it. I should not have spoken of it now, but that I know my little Alice would not believe a word I am going to tell her, if she thought she was listening to an old bachelor's croakings. Now I can speak with authority. You think you could not live without Herbert's love? My dear, we can live without a great many things that we fancy indispensable. Nor is it so very easy to die. There comes many a time in life when it would seem quite according to the fitness of things, just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but, unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot do so just in the nick of time; a