e assassin of
youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one
treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening
for his step, like a lover.

Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the
explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had
died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he
would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made
death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many
allusions to Jenny.

Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only
heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears
listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of
the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had
gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and
every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new
emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides,
some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news
to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for
such precious tidings.

Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones
again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that?
How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the
silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream,
had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed
sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in
the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us
to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers
to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of
hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that
the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:--

"Is death's long kiss a richer kiss
Than mine was wont to be,
Or have you gone to some far bliss
And straight forgotten me?"

Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of
faithfulness might some day be a burden to her...

This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the
activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had
become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours
paid to death was only one expr