“Yes, Harry.”

After a pause he spoke again:  “You have done me good, dear; I shall rest better for having talked to you to-night.  It is in the night-time that thought is terrible.  For months past, ever since I was ill in the spring, the foreshadow of failure has loomed dark and close upon me like a suffocating weight—­what I must do; how I must live without being a tax on my father, if I am to live; what he and my mother would feel; what old friends would say; who could or would help me to some harmless occupation; and whether I should not, for everybody’s sake, be better out of the world.”

“Oh, Harry, but that was faint-hearted!” said Bessie with a touch of reproach.  “You forgot me, then?”

“I have had several strokes of bad luck lately, or perhaps I ought to suspect that not being in good case my work was weak.  Manuscript after manuscript has been returned on my hands.  Surely this was discouraging.  There on the table is a roll of which I had better hopes, and I found it awaiting me here.”

“May I take it to Fairfield and read it?” Bessie asked.  “It is as big as a book.”

“Yes; if it were printed and bound it would be a book.  Read it, and let me know how it impresses you.”

Bessie looked mightily glad.  “If you will let me help you, Harry, you will make me happy,” said she.  “What is it about?”

“It is a story, for your comfort—­a true story.  I could not devise a plot, so I fell back on a series of pathetic facts.  Life is very sad, Bessie.  Why are we so fond of it?”

“We take it in detail, as we take the hours of the day and the days of the year, and it is very endurable.  It has seemed to me sometimes that those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness.  Consider Mr. and Mrs. Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet in their devotion to one another what perfect peace and consolation!”

“Oh, Bessie, but it is a dreadful fate!” said Harry.  “Poor Moxon! who began life with as fine hopes and as solid grounds for them as any man,—­there he is vegetating at Littlemire still, his mind chiefly taken up with thinking whether his sick wife will be a little more or a little less suffering to-day than she was yesterday.”

“I saw them last week, and could have envied them.  She is as near an angel as a woman can be; and he was very contented in the garden, giving lessons to a village boy in whom he has discovered a genius for mathematics.  He talked of nothing else.”

“Poor boy! poor genius!  And are we to grow after the Moxons’ pattern, Bessie—­meek, patient, heavenly?” said Harry.

“By the time our hair is white, Harry, I have no objection, but there is a long meanwhile,” replied Bessie with brave uplooking face.  “We have love between us and about us, and that is the first thing.  The best pleasures are the cheapest—­we burden life with too many needless cares.  You may do as much good in an obscure groove of the world as you might do if your name was in all men’s mouths.  I don’t believe that I admire very successful people.”