mother. Oh! God!
Thy will be done!"

Then with a smile almost of beatitude, she sank down lower, and
nestled closer to her long-denied love. Leon stooped and kissed her
again, but did not speak. His heart was full, and his emotions rose
within his breast, so that he felt a curious sensation of fulness in
his throat, which warned him not to essay speech.

In silence they remained so for a time, not computed by either. She
was lost in thoughts such as have been aroused in many hearts by the
poet's magic words, "It might have been!" This boy was his, and might
have been hers, if----! Ah! What chasms have been bridged by these two
letters, which form this little, mighty word!

Leon began to grasp, but slowly, all that the future would hold for
him with the added knowledge granted to him this night. He pondered
over the past, and remembering how stern had been his life, and how
austere had been the manner of this woman who had been his mother, and
adding up the sum of all, he wondered that he had found such love for
her within his heart. For his love had been recognized by himself as
suddenly as he had given fervent expression to it, when he embraced
that mother who denied her motherhood. If the poet's words which I
have quoted conceal a thought of sadness within their meaning, what
woe resides within the thought encompassed by those other words, "Too
late!" To both of these, the woman and the boy, the recognition of the
joys of love, had come too late. As this thought at last penetrated
the mind of the dreaming youth, he started, awakening from his
abstraction. At the same moment, the lamp flared up, flickered, and
went out. Then as darkness enshrouded him, so deep that he almost felt
it touch his brow, he shivered, and a long moan escaped him followed
by an anguished cry:

"Mother!"

At last he realized what he had heard. In two ways was he to lose what
all good men hold dearest on this earth: a mother. First, she denied
the relationship; second, she had told him that she was dying. No
answer came back to his cry. The woman in his arms made no sound. She
did not stir. He leaned his ear against her heart. It had ceased to
beat. She was dead. Her spirit had slipped away, unnoticed by the
loving boy whose arms encircled her shrivelled form, but whose love
full surely lighted her way up among the stars! Up, to that mysterious
realm, too vast for human thought, too limitless for human mind; where
the sinning and the sinl