med
as though the soft delicate air through which it passed, the exquisite
beauty of the sloping landscape and old garden over which it traveled,
had had a rarefying influence upon the sound itself, and had mellowed
its tones into a strain of the most perfect music throbbing with harmony
and dying away in faint, delicious murmurs. They stood and listened to
it, and a sudden light swept into the pale face upon the couch. They all
looked at her in a sudden awe. The priest sank upon his knees by her
side, and prayed. Long desired, it had come at last at this most fitting
moment. The glory of death shone in her face, and the light of a coming
release flashed across her features. She died as few can die, as one who
sees descending from the clouds a long-promised happiness, and whose
heart and soul go forth to meet it with joy.

They stayed and buried her under a cypress tree, in a sunny corner of
the monastery churchyard, where a plain black cross marked her grave.
Then they turned their faces toward England.

* * * * *

And in England they were happy. For the first few years they chose to
live almost in retirement at their stately home, for with no desire for
notoriety, Sir Bernard Beaumerville found himself on his return from
abroad the most famous man in London. To escape from the lionizing that
threatened him, Helen and he shut themselves up at Beaumerville Court,
and steadfastly refused all invitations. Of their life there little need
be said, save that to each it was the perfect realization of dreams
which had once seemed too sweet to be possible.

And in the midst of it all he found time to write. From the quaint oak
library, where he had gone back into the old realms of thoughtland, he
sent out into the world a great work. Once more the columns of the daily
papers and the reviews were busy with his name, and for once all were
unanimous. All bowed down before his genius, and his name was written
into the history of his generation. Through a burning sea of trouble, of
intellectual disquiet and mental agony, he had emerged strengthened at
every point. Love had fulfilled upon him its great office. He was
humanized. The impersonality, which is the student's bane, which deepens
into misanthropy, cynicism, and pessimism, yielded before it. The voices
of his own children became dearer to him than the written thoughts of
dead men. It was the reassertion of nature, and it was well for him. So