n the living." He went out again, as
silently as he had come, and closed the door.

Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead? In her inmost soul,
Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment
against any other person in the world. To those we love most, we are
invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now. The man she had
loved was no more than a stranger--and from a stranger can come no
intentional wrong.

"O God," prayed Evelina, for the first time, "help me to forgive!"

She threw back her veil once more. They were face to face at last,
with only a prayer between. His mute helplessness pleaded with her and
Ralph's despairing cry rang in her ears. The estranging mists cleared,
and, in truth, she put self aside.

Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her
to make it right, if he could. He must have suffered, unless he were
more than human. "Dear God," she prayed, again, "oh, help me forgive!"

All at once there was a change. The light seemed thrown into the
uttermost places of her darkened soul. She illumined, and a wave of
infinite pity swept her from head to foot. She leaned forward, her
hands seeking his, and upon Anthony Dexter's dead face there fell the
forgiving baptism of her tears.

In the hall, as she went out, she encountered Miss Mehitable. That
face, too, was changed. She had not come, as comes that ghoulish
procession of merest acquaintances, to gloat, living, over the helpless
dead.

At the sight of Evelina, she retreated. "I'll go back," murmured Miss
Mehitable, enigmatically. "You had the best right."

Evelina went down-stairs and home again, but Miss Mehitable did not
enter that silent room.

The third day came, and there was no resurrection. Since the miracle
of Easter, the world has waited its three days for the dead to rise
again. Ralph sat in the upper hall, just beyond the turn of the stair,
and beside him, unveiled, was Miss Evelina.

"It's you and I," he had pleaded, "don't you see that? Have you never
thought that you should have been my mother?"

From below, in Thorpe's deep voice, came the words of the burial
service: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live."

For a few moments, Thorpe spoke of death as the inevitable end of life,
and our ignorance of what lies beyond. He spoke of that mystic veil
which never parts save for a passage, a