enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful
nature.

"Yes, I shall remember," said Alvina, beyond tears now.

Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a
touch of queenliness in it.

"Kiss me, dear," she whispered.

Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her
too-much grief.

The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman
rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina's face, with a heavy, almost
accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they
looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they
closed--only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her
blood-phlegmed lips.

In the morning she died--lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her
lovely white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so
beautiful and clean always.

Alvina knew death--which is untellable. She knew that her darling
carried away a portion of her own soul into death.

But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into
death--the agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance;
the agony of the looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly
accusing, and pathetically, despairingly appealing--probe after
probe of mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose
its power to pierce to the quick!

Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after
the death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her
heart really broke.

"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way
to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.

"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.

"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"
said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.

"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"

"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But
time--time brings back--"

"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.

People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
confessed:

"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she
did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton
complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were
everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have