ave been speaking
about, for such 'extravagant and erring spirit' does not haunt the
living from love, but the dead from suffering. In this life, however,
few of us come really near to each other in the genuine simplicity of
love, and that may be the reason why the credible stories of love
meeting love across the strange difference are so few. It is a wonderful
touch, I always think, in the play of Hamlet, that, while the prince
gazes on the spirit of his father, noting every expression and
gesture--even his dress, as he passes through his late wife's chamber,
Gertrude, less unfaithful as widow than as wife, not only sees nothing,
but by no sigh or hint, no sense in the air, no beat of her own heart,
no creep even of her own flesh, divines his presence--is not only
certain that she sees nothing, but that she sees all there is. She is
the dead, not her husband. To the dead all are dead. The eternal life
makes manifest both life and death."

"Please, Mr. Polwarth," said Juliet, "remember it is the middle of the
night. No doubt it is just the suitable time, but I would rather not
make one in an orgy of horrors. We have all to be alone presently."

She hated to hear about death, and the grandest of words, Eternal Life,
which to most means nothing but prolonged existence, meant to her just
death. If she had stolen a magic spell for avoiding it, she could not
have shrunk more from any reference to the one thing commonest and most
inevitable. Often as she tried to imagine the reflection of her own
death in the mind of her Paul, the mere mention of the ugly thing seemed
to her ill-mannered, almost indecent.

"The Lord is awake all night," said Polwarth, rising, "and therefore
the night is holy as the day.--Ruth, we should be rather frightened to
walk home under that awful sky, if we thought the Lord was not with us."

"The night is fine enough," said Juliet.

"Yes," said Ruth, replying to her uncle, not to Juliet; "but even if He
were asleep--you remember how He slept once, and yet reproached His
disciples with their fear and doubt."

"I do; but in the little faith with which He reproached them, He
referred, not to Himself, but to His Father. Whether He slept or waked
it was all one: the Son may sleep, for the Father never sleeps."

They stood beside each other, taking their leave: what little objects
they were, opposite the two graceful ladies, who also stood beside each
other, pleasant to look upon. Sorrow and sufferin