Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/63

Rh all these long years. You would not have wished to have passed her by unloved and unloving. Tell me, would you?"

True," I said. "I could not do without her even dead."

It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all," she quoted softly.

'For a moment I doubted her. "The woman is a sentimentalist after all," I thought bitterly, and half turned away. But Mrs. Barnes seemed hardly to notice my movement, she was intently musing on some sad thought of her own; and curiously enough, when she spoke it was to preface her story with almost the words I had spoken to myself when I told her my own.

We shall never meet again, in all probability, and that being so I will tell you what my sorrow is. I also suffer, and it may ease your pain to know another has as great a burden as yours, ay, even heavier to bear, for you have only love to grieve for, but I have guilt as well."

'I turned towards the little creature with an incredulous cry, but she waved me to silence with an impatient hand, and fixing her eyes, that shone