seemed to Isabel to rest upon
her wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity. She had
avoided her grandmother, secluded herself from the closest
companions, been very thoughtful.

Years had elapsed since. But no experience of the soul is ever
wasted or effaceable; and as the sound of the bells now reached her
across the garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which had
stirred within her at confirmation. First heard whispering then,
the sacred annunciation now more eloquently urged that in her
church, the hour of real need being come, she would find refuge,
help, more than earthly counsellor.

She returned unobserved to the house and after quick simple
preparation, was on her way.

When she slipped shrinkingly into her pew, scarce any one had
arrived. Several women in mourning were there and two or three
aged men. It is the sorrowful and the old who head the human host
in its march toward Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behind
and are satisfied with the earth. Isabel looked around with a
poignant realization of the broken company over into which she had
so swiftly crossed.

She had never before been in the church when it was empty. How
hushed and solemn it waited in its noonday twilight--the Divine
already there, faithful keeper of the ancient compact; the human
not yet arrived. Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; here
the wounded eye of the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and she
sank to her knees with a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of the
lips, for Isabel knew nothing about prayer in her own words--that
she might have peace of mind during these guarded hours: there
would be so much time afterwards in which to remember--so many
years in which to remember!

How still it was! At first she started at every sound: the barely
audible opening and shutting of a pew door by some careful hand;
the grating of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage was
driven to the entrance; the love-calls of sparrows building in the
climbing oak around the Gothic windows.

Soon, however, her ear became sealed to all outward disturbance.
She had fled to the church, driven by many young impulses, but
among them was the keen hope that her new Sorrow, which had begun
to follow her everywhere since she awoke, would wait outside when
she entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalk
behind her into the very splendor of the Spotless. But as she now
let her eyes wander down