the grave of the dishonored woman, his lost wife,
pain, keen as a Damascus blade, enters my heart.

* * * *

I close my window and come in, for the night dews are falling and I am
rheumatic and stiff in the legs.

So, every night, musing, I go early to my bed, but before I lie down,
after my prayer is said, I rise to put fresh water in the vase of
flowers, which are always fresh, beneath the picture upon my wall.

For one moment I stand and gaze into a pure, girlish face, with a pallid
brow and far-away blue eyes.

She was only fifteen years old, and I twice as many, when we quarrelled
like foolish children.

The day she married my brother--my youngest, best-beloved brother
Benjamin--I laid this miniature, face downward, in a secret drawer of my
desk.

In the first year she died, and in another Benjamin had taken to himself
a new wife, with merrier eyes and ruddier lips.

My heart leaped within me when I kissed my new sister, but she knew not
that my joy was because she was giving me back my love.

Trembling with ecstasy, I took this image from its hiding-place, and for
nearly fifty years the flowers beneath it have not withered.

As I stood alone here one night, ere I knew he had entered, my little
brother's hand was upon my shoulder. For a moment only he was silent,
awe-stricken.

"She was always yours, my brother," he said, presently, in a tremulous
whisper. "I did not know until it was too late. She had
misunderstood--but God was very merciful," and turning he left her to
me.

And still each day I lay fresh flowers at her shrine, cherishing the
dart that rends my heart the while, for its testimony to the immortality
of my passion.

Do you smile because a trembling old man feasts his failing eyes on a
fair woman's face and prates of love and flowers and beauty? Smile if
you will, but if you do it is because you, being of the earth, cannot
understand.

These things are of the spirit; and palsy and rheumatism and waning
strength are of the flesh, which profiteth nothing.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour
Sketches, by Ruth McEnery Stuart

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