Bruno looked at it admiringly. `What a lovely brightness!' he said. `It's just like a little red star! May I take it in my hand?'

Sylvie nodded: and Bruno carried it off to the window, and held it aloft against the sky, whose deepening blue was already spangled with stars. Soon he came running back in some excitement. `Sylvie! Look here!' he cried. `I can see right through it when I hold it up to the sky. And it isn't red a bit: it's, oh such a lovely blue! And the words are all different! Do look at it!'

Sylvie was quite excited, too, by this time; and the two children eagerly held up the Jewel to the light, and spelled out the legend between them, `ALL WILL LOVE SYLVIE.'

`Why, this is the other Jewel!' cried Bruno. `Don't you remember, Sylvie? The one you didn't choose!'

Sylvie took it from him, with a puzzled look, and held it, now up to the light, now down. `It's blue, one way,' she said softly to herself, `and it's red the other way! Why, I thought there were two of them--Father!' she suddenly exclaimed, laying the Jewel once more in his hand, `I do believe it was the same Jewel all the time!'

`Then you choosed it from itself,' Bruno thoughtfully remarked. `Father, could Sylvie choose a thing from itself?'

`Yes, my own one,' the old man replied to Sylvie, not noticing Bruno's embarrassing question, `it was the same Jewel--but you chose quite right.' And he fastened the ribbon round her neck again.

`SYLVIE WILL LOVE ALL--ALL WILL LOVE SYLVIE,' Bruno murmured, raising himself on tiptoe to kiss the `little red star'. `And, when you look at it, it's red and fierce like the sun--and, when you look through it, it's gentle and blue like the sky!'

`God's own sky,' Sylvie said, dreamily.

`God's own sky,' the little fellow repeated, as they stood, lovingly clinging together, and looking out into the night. `But oh, Sylvie, what makes the sky such a darling blue?'

Sylvie's sweet lips shaped themselves to reply, but her voice sounded faint and very far away. The vision was fast slipping from my eager gaze: but it seemed to me, in that last bewildering moment, that not Sylvie but an angel was looking out through those trustful brown eyes, and that not Sylvie's but an angel's voice was whispering

`IT IS LOVE.'