king doctor told you out of your mind,
but doctors don't know everything. You are well, and that makes me
happier than anything else in the world."

Harry laughed a little faintly. "Well, I dare say you are right,
dear," he said.

"Right?--of course I am right," said Maria. Then she danced off to
change her gown.

After she had gone, Harry rose from the chair; he had been sitting
beside the centre-table with the evening paper. He walked over to the
window and looked out at the night. It was bright moonlight. The
trees were in full leaf, and the shadows were of such loveliness that
they fairly seemed celestial. Harry gazed out at the night scene, at
the moon riding through the unbelievable and unfathomable blue of the
sky, like a crystal ball, with a slight following of golden clouds;
he gazed at the fairy shadows which transformed the familiar village
street into something beyond earth, and he sighed. The conviction of
his approaching dissolution had never been so strong as at that
moment. He seemed fairly to see his own mortality--that gate of death
which lay wide open for him. Yet, all at once, a sense of peace and
trust almost ineffable came over him. Death seemed merely the
going-out into the true open, the essence of the moonlight and the
beauty. It seemed the tasting and absorbing the food for his own
spiritual hunger, which had been upon him from birth, that which had
always been just out of his reach. When Maria returned in her pink
gingham school-gown, she found her father seated beside the table as
he had been when she left. He looked up at her with a bright smile
which somehow chilled her, although she tried to drive the conviction
of the chill from her mind. She got a new book from the case, and
proposed reading aloud to him.

"Hadn't you better go to bed, dear?" said Harry. "You will have a
hard day to-morrow."

"No; I am going to sit up with you till She comes home," said Maria,
"and we might as well amuse ourselves." She began to read, and Harry
listened happily. But Maria, whenever she glanced over her book at
her father's happy face, felt the same undefinable chill.

However, when Ida came home and they had a little supper of sardines
and crackers, she did not think any more of it. She went to bed with
her head full of the morrow and her new gown and the glories awaiting
her. She tried not to be vain, but was uncomfortably conscious that
she was glad that she was first in her class, instead of s