She shrank from the look of her face in the glass.

"Cold water and fresh air," she said to herself, with a smile, "will soon remedy such paleness." And thus on that very day began for her the new life--the life in which, no longer sure of her love, she was to try to win it.
He would have loved her had he been able; but his own words were true--"Love is fate." There was nothing in common between them--no sympathy--none of those mystical cords that, once touched, set two human hearts throbbing, and never rest until they are one.

He could not have been fonder of her than he was, in a brotherly sense; but as for lover's love, from the first day he had seen her, a beautiful, dark-eyed child, until the last he had never felt the least semblance of it.
It was a story of failure.

She strove as perhaps woman never before had striven, and she succeeded in winning his truest admiration, his warmest friendship; he felt more at home with her than any one else in the wide world.

But there it ended--she won no more.
It was not his fault; it was simply because the electric spark called love had never been and never could be elicited between his soul and hers.