d. It occurred to me that you might
like to read it. Why not?"

"Yes, yes, very much," answered Morris eagerly. "That is, if you think
she will not mind. You see, it is private."

Mr. Fregelius took no notice of the tense of which Morris made use, for
the reason that it seemed natural to him that he should employ it. Their
strange habit was to talk of Stella, not as we speak of one dead, but as
a living individuality with whom they chanced for a while to be unable
to communicate.

"I do not think that she will mind," he answered slowly; "quite the
reverse, indeed. It is a record of a phase and period of her existence
which, I believe, she might wish those who are--interested in her--to
study, especially as she had no secrets that she could desire to
conceal. From first to last I believe her life to have been as clear as
the sky, and as pure as running water."

"Very well," answered Morris, "if I come across any passage that I think
I ought not to read, I will skip."

"I can find nothing of the sort, or I would not give it to you," said
Mr. Fregelius. "But, of course, I have not read the volumes through
as yet. There has been no time for that. I have sampled them here and
there, that is all."

That night Morris took those shabby note-books home with him. Mary,
who according to her custom went to bed early, being by this time fast
asleep, he retired to his laboratory in the old chapel, where it was his
habit to sit, especially when, as at the present time, his father was
away from home. Here, without wasting a moment, he began his study of
them.

It was with very strange sensations, such as he had never before
experienced, that he opened the first of the volumes, written some
thirteen years earlier, that is, about ten years before Stella's death.
Their actual acquaintance had been but brief. Now he was about to
complete his knowledge of her, to learn many things which he had found
no time, or had forgotten to inquire into, to discover the explanation
of various phases of her character hitherto but half-revealed; perhaps
to trace to its source the energy of that real, but mystic, faith with
which it was informed. This diary that had come--or perhaps been sent
to him--in so unexpected a fashion, was the key whereby he hoped to open
the most hidden chambers of the heart of the woman whom he loved, and
who loved him with all her strength and soul.

Little wonder, then, that he trembled upon the threshold of such