nd
another pair of urns the two mothers, her own and Phaon's.

Both had fallen victims on the same day to the plague, the only
pestilence that had visited this bright coast within the memory of man.
This had happened eight years ago.

At that time Xanthe was still a child, but Phaon a tall lad.

The girl passed this place ten times a day, often thought of the beloved
dead, and, when she chanced to remember them still more vividly, waved
a greeting to the dear ashes, because some impulse urged her to give her
faithful memory some outward expression.

Very rarely did she recall the day when the funeral-pile had cooled,
and the ashes of the two mothers, both so early summoned to the realm
of shadows, were collected, placed in the vases, and added to the other
urns. But now she could not help remembering it, and how she had sat
before one of the pillars of the monument weeping bitterly, and asking
herself again and again, if it were possible that her mother would
never, never come to kiss her, speak caressing words, arrange her hair
and pet her; nay, for the first time, she longed to hear even a sharp
reproof from the lips now closed forever.

Phaon was standing by the other pillar, his eyes covered with his right
hand.

Never before or since had she seen him look so sad, and it cut her to
the heart when she noticed that he trembled as if a chill had seized
him, and, drawing a long breath, pushed back the hair, which like a
coalblack curtain, covered half his forehead. She had wept bitterly, but
he shed no tears. Only a few poor words were exchanged between them in
that hour, but each one still echoed in her ears to-day, as if hours
instead of years intervened between that time and now.

"Mine was so good," Xanthe had sobbed; but he only nodded, and, after
fifteen minutes had passed, said nothing but, "And mine too."

In spite of the long pause that separated the girl's words from the
boy's, they were tenderly united, bound together by the thought,
dwelling uninterruptedly in both childish hearts, "My mother was so
good."

It was again Xanthe who, after some time, had broken the silence by
asking "Whom have I now?"

Again it was long ere Phaon, for his only answer, could repeat softly:

"Yes, whom?"

They were trivial words, but they expressed the deep wretchedness which
only a child's heart can feel.

Scarcely had they found their way over the boy's lips when he pressed
his left hand also over his eyes, hi