ed between the cushions of the window-seat,--the very handkerchief
she used to wave, in summer days long gone. The white boats went
sailing beneath the evening light, children shouted and splashed in the
water, a song came from a yacht, a steam-whistle shrilled from the
receding steamer; but she for whom alone those little signs of life had
been dear and precious would henceforth be as invisible to our eyes as
if time and space had never held her; and the young moon and the
evening star seemed but empty things unless they could pilot us to some
world where the splendor of her loveliness could match their own.

Twilight faded, evening darkened, and still Kenmure lay motionless,
until his strong form grew in my moody fancy to be like some carving of
Michel Angelo's, more than like a living man. And when he at last
startled me by speaking, it was with a voice so far off and so strange,
it might almost have come wandering down from the century when Michel
Angelo lived.

"You are right," he said. "I have been living in a fruitless dream. It
has all vanished. The absurdity of speaking of creative art! With all
my life-long devotion, I have created nothing. I have kept no memorial
of her presence, nothing to perpetuate the most beautiful of lives."

Before I could answer, the door came softly open, and there stood in
the doorway a small white figure, holding aloft a lighted taper of pure
alabaster. It was Marian in her little night-dress, with the loose blue
wrapper trailing behind her, let go in the effort to hold carefully the
doll, Susan Halliday, robed also for the night.

"May I come in?" said the child.

Kenmure was motionless at first: then, looking over his shoulder, said
merely, "What?"

"Janet said," continued Marian, in her clear and methodical way, "that
my mother was up in heaven, and would help God hear my prayers at any
rate; but if I pleased, I could come and say them by you."

A shudder passed over Kenmure; then he turned away, and put his hands
over his eyes. She waited for no answer, but, putting down the
candlestick, in her wonted careful manner, upon a chair, she began to
climb upon the bed, lifting laboriously one little rosy foot, then
another, still dragging after her, with great effort, the doll.
Nestling at her father's breast, I saw her kneel.

"Once my mother put her arm round me, when I said my prayers." She made
this remark, under her breath, less as a suggestion, it seemed, than as
the s