But let me ask you a question, Mr.Hope ?" "Yes, Mary." "Have you lived _two lives_ ?" Said Hope, solemnly, "I have lived through great changes, but only one life." "Well, then," said Mary, "I have lived two; or more likely it was one life, only some of it in another world--my other world, I mean." Hope left off binding her wrist, and said, "I don't understand you." But his heart began to pant.
The words that passed between them were now so strange that both their voices sank into solemnity, and had an acute observer listened to them he would have noticed that these two mellow voices had similar beauties, and were pitched exactly in the same key, though there was, of course, an octave between them.
"Understand me?
How should you?
It is all so strange, so mysterious: I have never told a soul; but I will tell you.

You won't laugh at me ?" "Laugh at you?
Only fools laugh at what they don't understand.

Why, Mary, I hang on every word you say with breathless interest." "Dear Mr.Hope! Well, then, I will tell you.

Sometimes in the silent night, when the present does not glare at one, the past comes back to me dimly, and I seem to have lived two lives: one long, one short--too short.

My long life in a comfortable house, with servants and carriages and all that.