ous
dignity. "That wouldn't have been right, and him alive. And I didn't
wait for dead men's shoes. But somehow I thought there was something
between you and me that couldn't be outlived."

Amelia looked at him with a frank sweetness which transfigured her face
into spiritual beauty.

"I thought so, too," she answered, with that simplicity ever attending
our approximation to the truth. "I never once said it to myself; but all
this year, 'way down in my heart, I knew you'd come back. And I wanted
you to come. I guess I'd got it all planned out how we'd make up for
what we'd lost, and build up a new life. But so far as I go, I guess I
didn't lose by what I've lived through. I guess I gained somethin' I'd
sooner give up my life than even lose the memory of."

So absorbed was she in her own spiritual inheritance that she quite
forgot his pain. She gazed past him with an unseeing look; and striving
to meet and recall it, he faced the vision of their divided lives.
To-morrow Amelia would remember his loss and mourn over it with maternal
pangs; to-night she was oblivious of all but her own. Great human
experiences are costly things; they demand sacrifice, not only of
ourselves, but of those who are near us. The room was intolerable to
Laurie. He took his hat and coat, and hurried out. Amelia heard the
dragging door closed behind him. She realized, with the numbness born of
supreme emotion, that he was putting on his coat outside in the cold;
and she did not mind. The bells stirred, and went clanging away. Then
she drew a long breath, and bowed her head on her hands in an
acquiescence that was like prayer.

It seemed a long time to Amelia before she awoke again to temporal
things. She rose, smiling, to her feet, and looked about her as if her
eyes caressed every corner of the homely room. She picked up puss in a
round, comfortable ball, and carried her back to the hearthside chair;
there she stroked her until her touchy ladyship had settled down again
to purring content. Then Amelia, still smiling, and with an absent look,
as if her mind wandered through lovely possibilities of a sort which
can never be undone, drew forth the spinning-wheel, and fitted a roll to
the spindle. She began stepping back and forth as if she moved to the
measure of an unheard song, and the pleasant hum of her spinning broke
delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new
vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace,