if his own heart
was weeping with his beloved, anxious wife.

He knew that this thought had often poisoned her life and, full of
tender sympathy, turned her beautiful face towards him and pressed a
long kiss on her closed eyes, then said, tenderly:

"You are mine, I am yours, and if there is a life beyond the grave,
and an eternal justice, the dumb will speak as they desire, and sing
wondrous songs with the angels; the sorrowful will again be happy there.
We will hope, we will both hope! Do you remember how I read Dante aloud
to you, and tried to explain his divine creation, as we sat on the bench
by the fig-tree. The sea roared below us, and our hearts swelled higher
than its storm-lashed waves. How soft was the air, how bright the
sunshine! This earth seemed doubly beautiful to you and me as, led by
the hand of the divine seer and singer, we descended shuddering to the
nether world. There the good and noble men of ancient times walked in a
flowery meadow, and among them the poet beheld in solitary grandeur--do
you still remember how the passage runs? 'E solo in parte vidi 'l
Saladino.' Among them he also saw the Moslem Saladin, the conqueror of
the Christians. If any one possessed the key of the mysteries of the
other world, Elizabeth, it was Dante. He assigned a lofty place to the
pagan, who was a true man--a man with a pure mind, a zeal for goodness
and right, and I think I shall have a place there too. Courage,
Elizabeth, courage!"

A beautiful smile had illumined the wife's features, while she was
reminded of the happiest hours of her life, but when he paused, gazed
into her eyes, and clasped her right hand in his, she was seized with
an intense longing to pray once, only once, with him to the Saviour so,
drawing her fingers from his, she pressed the image of the Crucified
One to her breast with her left hand, pleading with mute motions of her
lips, ineligible to him alone, and with ardent entreaty in her large,
tearful eyes: "Pray, pray with me, pray to the saviour."

Lopez was greatly agitated; his heart beat faster, and a strong impulse
urged him to start up, cry "no," and not allow himself to be moved, by
an affectionate meakness, into bowing his manly soul before one, who, to
him, was no more than human.

The noble figure of the crucified Saviour, carved by an artist's hand in
ivory, hung from an ebony cross, and he thrust the image back, intending
to turn proudly way, he gazed at the face and found the