So we go,--so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we
talk! We drop out a common piece of news,--"Mr. So-and-so is
dead,--Miss Such-a-one is married,--such a ship has sailed,"--and lo,
on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news
silently,--gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble
rising to tell its drowning pang. And this--God help us!--is what we
call living!
CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER.
Mary returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had
faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick
boughs of the apple-trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and
sad, and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often sounds
as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to superior beings. There the
little hoarse, black wretches were scraping and creaking, as if life
and death were invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were
created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little wind
shivered among the boughs, and brought down a shower of white petals
which shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a ray
touched some tall head of grass, and forthwith it blossomed into
silver, and stirred itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint just
awaking in paradise.
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