hrilled from the receding
steamer; but she for whom alone those little signs of life had been dear
and precious would henceforth be as invisible to our eyes as if time and
space had never held her; and the young moon and the evening star seemed
but empty things, unless they could pilot us to some world where the
splendor of her loveliness could match their own.

Twilight faded, evening darkened, and still Kenmure lay motionless,
until his strong form grew in my moody fancy to be like some carving of
Michel Angelo, more than like a living man. And when he at last startled
me by speaking, it was with a voice so far off and so strange, it might
almost have come wandering down from the century when Michel Angelo
lived.

"You are right," he said. "I have been living in a dream. It has all
vanished. I have kept no memorial of her presence, nothing to
perpetuate the most beautiful of lives."

Before I could answer, the door came softly open, and there stood in the
doorway a small white figure, holding aloft a lighted taper of pure
alabaster. It was Marian in her little night-dress, with the loose, blue
wrapper trailing behind her, let go in the effort to hold carefully the
doll, Susan Halliday, robed also for the night.

"May I come in?" said the child.

Kenmure was motionless at first, then, looking over his shoulder, said
merely, "What?"

"Janet said," continued Marian, in her clear and methodical way, "that
my mother was up in heaven, and would help God hear my prayers at any
rate; but if I pleased, I could come and say them by you."

A shudder passed over Kenmure; then he turned away, and put his hands
over his eyes. She waited for no answer, but, putting down the
candlestick, in her wonted careful manner, upon a chair, she began to
climb upon the bed, lifting laboriously one little rosy foot, then
another, still dragging after her, with great effort, the doll. Nestling
at her father's breast, I saw her kneel.

"Once my mother put her arm round me, when I said my prayers." She made
this remark, under her breath, less as a suggestion, it seemed, than as
the simple statement of a fact.

Instantly I saw Kenmure's arm move, and grasp her with that strong and
gentle touch of his that I had so often noticed in the studio,--a touch
that seemed quiet as the approach of fate, and as resistless. I knew him
well enough to understand that iron adoption.

He drew her toward him, her soft hair was on his breast, she looked