"I loved you dearly! I love you still! You were to me as a younger sister; yes, dearer than sisters of the same blood; for you and I were so lonely, Hilda, that the whole world pressed us together by its solitude and strangeness.

Then, will you not touch my hand?
Am I not the same as yesterday ?" "Alas! no, Miriam!" said Hilda.
"Yes, the same, the same for you, Hilda," rejoined her lost friend.
"Were you to touch my hand, you would find it as warm to your grasp as ever.

If you were sick or suffering, I would watch night and day for you.

It is in such simple offices that true affection shows itself; and so I speak of them.

Yet now, Hilda, your very look seems to put me beyond the limits of human kind!" "It is not I, Miriam," said Hilda; "not I that have done this." "You, and you only, Hilda," replied Miriam, stirred up to make her own cause good by the repellent force which her friend opposed to her.