head
of the stairway, and asked me if I would go in to look at little
Marian, who was sleeping. I begged Kenmure to go also but he refused,
almost savagely, and went on with heavy step into Laura's deserted room.

Almost the moment I entered the child's chamber, she waked up suddenly,
looked at me, and said, "I know you, you are my friend." She never
would call me her cousin, I was always her friend. Then she sat up in
bed, with her eyes wide open, and said, as if stating a problem which
had been put by for my solution, "I should like to see my mother."

How our hearts are rent by the unquestioning faith of children, when
they come to test the love that has so often worked what seemed to them
miracles,--and ask of it miracles indeed! I tried to explain to her the
continued existence of her mother, and she listened to it as if her
eyes drank in all that I could say, and more. But the apparent distance
between earth and heaven baffled her baby mind, as it so often and so
sadly baffles the thoughts of us elders. I wondered what precise change
seemed to her to have taken place. This all-fascinating Laura, whom she
adored, and who had yet never been to her what other women are to their
darlings,--did heaven seem to put her farther off, or bring her more
near? I could never know. The healthy child had no morbid questionings;
and as she had come into the world to be a sunbeam, she must not fail
of that mission. She was kicking about the bed, by this time, in her
nightgown, and holding her pink little toes in all sorts of difficult
attitudes, when she suddenly said, looking me full in the face: "If my
mother was so high up that she had her feet upon a star, do you think
that I could see her?"

This astronomical apotheosis startled me for a moment, but I said
unhesitatingly, "Yes," feeling sure that the lustrous eyes that looked
in mine could certainly see as far as Dante's, when Beatrice was
transferred from his side to the highest realm of Paradise. I put my
head beside hers upon the pillow, and stayed till I thought she was
asleep.

I then followed Kenmure into Laura's chamber. It was dusk, but the
after-sunset glow still bathed the room with imperfect light, and he
lay upon the bed, his hands clenched over his eyes.

There was a deep bow-window where Laura used to sit and watch us,
sometimes, when we put off in the boat. Her aeolian harp was in the
casement, breaking its heart in music. A delicate handkerchief was
lodg