"No more," she replied. "We've lost each other in this life, but there's
another life to come."

[Sidenote: Whirling Atoms]

"'Helen's lips are drifting dust,'" he quoted.

"Perhaps not. That which once was Helen may be alive to-day in a
thousand different forms. A violet upon a mossy bank, a bough of apple
blossoms mirrored in a pool, the blood upon some rust-stained sword, a
woman waiting, somewhere, for a lover who does not come."

"And her soul?"

"Drawn back into the Universal soul, to be born anew, in part or all."

"What a pagan you are!"

"Yes," she responded, smiling a little, "I am pagan and heathen and
Christian martyr and much else. I am everything that I can understand
and nothing that I cannot. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see, but what are we after all? Only two whirling atoms, blown
on winds of Fate. What difference does it make whether we cling
together, or are hopelessly sundered, as far apart as the poles?"

"The same difference that it makes to a human body whether its atoms
behave or not. You don't want to upset the Universe, do you?"

He laughed, a trifle bitterly. "I don't flatter myself that I could."

"Not you alone, nor I, nor even both together, but we mustn't set a bad
example to other atoms. As long as there's a preponderance of right in
the world, things are clear, but, shift the balance, and then----"

[Sidenote: What Is Right?]

"What is right?" he demanded, roughly. "Always to do the thing you don't
want to do?"

"That depends," she returned, shrugging her shoulders. "It is to do what
you think is right, and trust that it may be so."

Alden stopped rowing. He was interested in these vague abstractions.
"And," he said, "if a woman thinks it is her duty to murder her husband,
and does it, is she doing right?"

"Possibly. I've seen lots of husbands who would make the world better by
leaving it, even so--well, abruptly, as you indicate. And the lady you
speak of, who, as it were, assists, may merely have drawn a generous
part of Lucretia Borgia for her soul-substance, and this portion chanced
to assert itself while her husband was in the house and out of temper."

"Don't be flippant, darling. This is our last day together. Let's not
play a waltz at an open grave."

The long light lay upon the tranquil waters, and, as a mirror might, the
river gave it back a hundred-fold, sending stray gleams into the rushes
at the bend in the stream, long arrows of impalpable silver into