"Am I really losing you ?" She was touched--she was pained; but it had already occurred to her that she might do something better than say so.

It would not have alleviated her companion's distress to perceive, just then, whence she had sympathetically borrowed this ingenuity.

"I am not sorry for you," Gertrude said; "for in paying so much attention to me you are following a shadow--you are wasting something precious.

There is something else you might have that you don't look at--something better than I am.

That is a reality!" And then, with intention, she looked at him and tried to smile a little.