A shadow settled upon her face.
"What a pity such a woman should be wasted in believing lies!" thought the doctor.

"How much better it would be if she would look things in the face, and resolve to live as she can, doing her best and enduring her worst, and waiting for the end! And yet, seeing color is not the thing itself, and only in the brain whose eye looks upon it, why should I think it better?
why should she not shine in the color of her fancy?
why should she grow gray because the color is only in herself?
We are but bubbles flying from the round of Nature's mill-wheel.

Our joys and griefs are the colors that play upon the bubbles.

Their throbs and ripples and changes are our music and poetry, and their bursting is our endless repose.

Let us waver and float and shine in the sun; let us bear pitifully and be kind; for the night cometh, and there an end." But in the sad silence, he and the lady were perhaps drifting further and further apart! "I did not mean," he said, plunging into what came first, "that I could not enjoy verse of the kind you prefer--as verse.