“That’s a beautiful illustration, my dear,” observed Sophie, after a thoughtful pause, “but I think it can be used better the other way.  The music of love, like other music, is an existence by itself, exclusive of the flesh-and-blood instruments, which weren’t given us to create music, but to interpret it to our earthly senses.  Our souls are the players; but in the next world we shall be able to perceive the harmony without need of any medium.  We can remember music, too, and enjoy it, long after we have heard it—­that is why we don’t need to be always together.  And yet it’s always sweet to meet, to hear a new tune; and the number of tunes is infinite; so love needs all eternity to make itself complete.”

When Sophie hit upon an idea which seemed to her spiritually beautiful and harmonious, she was apt to be carried away—­sometimes, perhaps, into deep water.  Yet thus, occasionally, did she catch glimpses of higher truths than a broader and safer wisdom could have attained.  Cornelia took one of the glowing leaves out of her basket, and looked at it.  Perhaps she saw, in the perfect earthly self-sufficiency of its splendor, something akin to herself.

“I suppose I don’t half appreciate your theory, Sophie, though it’s certainly pretty enough.  But you’re more soul than body, to begin with, I believe.  For my part, I almost think, sometimes, I could get along without any soul at all, and never feel the least inconvenience.  Perhaps everybody hasn’t a soul—­only a few favored ones.”

“What is it gives you such thoughts, Neelie?” said her sister, in a tone which, had it not been charged with so ranch depth of feeling, would have been plaintive.  Her gray, profound eyes, from a slight slanting upward of the brows above them, took on an expression in harmony with her tone.  “I never knew you to have such, until lately.”

“I suppose, until lately, I didn’t have any thoughts at all.”  There was a pause.  Sophie looked away over the beautiful valley, but it could not drive the shadow of anxious and loving sorrow from her face.  Cornelia busied herself selecting leaves from her basket, and arranging them in a bouquet.  Like them, she was more vividly and variously beautiful since the frost.

“Do you think men’s ideas of love, and such things, are as high as women’s?” asked she presently.

“Why shouldn’t they be?” answered Sophie, coming back from her reverie with a sigh.  “I’m sure Bressant’s are:  if they weren’t—­”

She sank again into thought, and another long silence followed.  This time Cornelia’s hands were still, but she watched Sophie closely.

“Well—­suppose they weren’t—­suppose he were to turn out not quite so high-minded, and all that, as you think him:  you would stop loving him, wouldn’t you?”

“Why do you suggest it!” cried Sophie, almost with a sob.  She bent down, resting her face upon her arms, and against the rock.  “That question has come to me once before.  How can I know?  If he were to degenerate now—­now, after I have told him that I love him—­it must be because he no longer loved me; and I should have no right to love him, then.”