. It was of a young man not over twenty-five. The
face was strong and full of virile suggestion, even in a picture. The
eyes were brown, the lips under the short mustache were firm, and the
thick, short, brown hair fell forward a bit over the left temple. It
was a handsome manly face.

The picture was dated eighteen years before. It hardly seemed possible
that eighteen years earlier this woman could have been old enough to
stir the passionate love of such a man. Her face was still young, her
form still slender; her abundant hair shaded deep gray eyes where the
spirit of youth still shone. But she belonged, by temperament and
profession, to that race of women who guard their youth marvellously.

There were no tears in her eyes as she sat long into the morning,
and, with his pictured face before her, reflected until she had
decided.

He had kept his word to her. His "good bye" had been loyally said. She
would keep hers in turn, and guard his first night's solitude in the
tomb with her watchful prayers. She calculated well the time. If she
travelled all day Sunday, she would be there sometime before midnight.
If she travelled back at once, she could be in town again in season to
play Monday; not in the best of conditions, to be sure, for so hard a
role as "Juliet," but she would have fulfilled a duty that would never
come to her again.

* * * * *

It was near midnight, on Sunday.

The light of the big round harvest moon fell through the warm air,
which scarcely moved above the graves of the almost forgotten dead in
the country churchyard. The low headstones cast long shadows over the
long grass that merely trembled as the noiseless wind moved over it.

A tall woman in a riding dress stood beside the rough sexton at the
door of the only large tomb in the enclosure.

He had grown into a bent old man since she last saw him, but he had
recognized her, and had not hesitated to obey her.

As he unlocked and pushed back the great door which moved easily and
noiselessly, he placed his lantern on the steps, and telling her that,
according to a family custom, there were lights inside, he turned
away, and left her, to keep his watch near by.

No need to tell her the family customs. She knew them but too well.

For a few moments she remained seated on the step where she had rested
to await the opening of the door, on the threshold of the tomb of the
one man among all the men she had met who