Can she tell me anything?
Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of, and through--Hush! Is the door fast?
Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.
You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of and to use for a special illustration.

Riding along over a rocky road, suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to a deep heavy rumble.

There is a great hollow under your feet,--a huge unsunned cavern.

Deep, deep beneath you in the core of the living rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.
So it is in life.

We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts, the gravel of the soul's highway,--now and then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling vehicle.