This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AN UNFINISHED SONG
83

soling offer to give me a more palatable tonic if the present one was too bitter.

It was the expression of true sympathy, it touched my heart, and I know I expressed my feeling in my eyes as I looked at him.

What a little thing a kind word is, and yet the miracles that it can work. If men would realise what a heaven they might create for themselves by regarding the little things that women cherish let them learn to heed her wishes in all small matters! A woman can forgive almost anything for a word of sympathy, but withhold that, and there is no telling what he may prepare for himself, from coldness to estrangement, and finally a life of misery; this is the result, the daily result, of lives in which woman's nature is not understood.

In a corner of the room was a table with writing material. The doctor wrote out a new prescription there, and handed it to my sister, remarking as he did so, "I suppose there is no further necessity for my coming?"

"She seems to be quite well," my sister replied; "if she has no relapse I think she will be able to get on by herself now."

I did not like my sister's reply. She might, it seemed to me, as a matter of cour-