Her eyes were luminous. There was a half-smile on her lips. Peter
Grimm's own eyes reflected her smile as he stroked her hair and
continued to look down into her rapt face as though to impress its every
detail upon his memory.

"Here on sunny, blossoming days," he went on, "when you look out on my
old gardens, as a happy wife, all the flowers and trees and shrubs shall
bloom enchanted to your eyes. For, love gives a heaven-light to
everything. And when the home we love is our own, it becomes doubly
fair."

The light in her eyes grew brighter and he stooped to brush his lips to
her forehead.

"All that happens, happens again," he went on in that same caressing
voice as though loath to leave her, and seeking to prolong his stay at
her side. "And when, as a mother, you explain each leaf and bud, and the
miracle of the growing flowers to your own little people, you will
sometimes think of the days when you and I walked through the gardens
and the leafy lanes together, and how I taught you all those
things--even as you shall be teaching your own children. Yes,--all that
happens, happens again and has happened before. You will teach them,
just as I taught you. And so I shall always linger in your heart. Here,
in our home, everything will keep on reminding you of me. Not in sadness
nor in gloom. But as a wonderful, golden memory. You will forget only
the part of me that was stubborn and unreasonable and ill-tempered--and
you will remember me only as I _wished_ to be. That is one of the gifts
of God to those who have left this world. Their dear ones remember them
only as kind, as loving, as good. Their faults fade from the memory and
the _good_ ever glows more and more brightly."

He paused. And still he could not leave the happy girl as she sat there
in her blissful, fireside reverie.

"I shall be waiting for you, Katje," he said. "And I shall be knowing
all of your life, its joys, its happy toil and its sweet rest, its
lights and its passing shadows. I shall love your children with all my
whole heart. And I shall be their grandfather just as though I were
here. I shall be everywhere about you and yours, Katje. Always. In the
stockings at Christmas, in the big, busy, teeming world of shadows, just
outside your threshold; or whispering to you in the stillness of the
night. And, as the years drift on, you can never know what pride I shall
take in your middle life--the very best age of all! After the luxuries
and the eag