cries that he knew were vain.

Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this
icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little
tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words
of a song, it was marble now.

"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I,
and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never
forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven.
Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad
somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking
into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead,
Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to
me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find
each other, _must_ find each other some day. I shall be so true,
Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?"

Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years
that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a
weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was
Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose
sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty
years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she
would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all.

But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it
too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from
the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she
is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward
journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at
last light up the dark portal--

"I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight."

But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark
traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was
that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had
Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her
eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the
door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already
wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to mis