sh this inner voice, to reason it into silence, to dull
its aching echo with song or speech or notes of loftier tones; but it
would not be quieted. And when she was left alone, when there was no
one near to comfort or strengthen, a great silence fell upon her. For
she indulged no stormy sorrow; her grief was a still rain that
fertilised and made fragrant her higher self. In her maiden heart she
had had a dream of being crowned with bride-flowers, and lo! it was
rue, and thyme gone to seed, and dead primroses that garlanded her
sad, unspoken love. But she wore them with a sweet, brave submission,
not affecting to disbelieve that time would surely heal love's aching
pain. For she knew that goodness was omnipotent to save and to
comfort.

In the mean time, as the Lanhearnes sailed southward Denas sailed
eastward, and in less than a couple of weeks half the circumference of
the world was between the lives so strangely and sorrowfully brought
together. Denas landed in Liverpool early in the morning, and without
delay went to London. She had business with Elizabeth, and she felt
constrained and restless until it should be accomplished. She
hesitated about going to the house in which she had spent with Roland
so many happy and sorrowful days, but when she entered the cab the
direction to it sprang naturally from her lips.

And there was already in her heart that tender fear that she might
forget, the fear that all who have loved and lost have trembled to
recognise, the fact that her sorrow might have an end, that she might
learn to dispense with what was once her life, that a little vulgar
existence with its stated meals and regular duties and petty pleasures
would ever fill the void in her love and life made by Roland's death.

So she tried, in the very place of her sweet bride memories, to bring
back the first passion of her widowed grief. She tried to fill the
empty chair with Roland's familiar form and the silent space with his
happy voice. Alas! other thoughts would intrude; considerations about
Elizabeth's attitude, about her home, about her future. For she knew
that this part of her life was finished; that nothing could ever bring
back its conditions. They had been absolutely barren conditions. Her
duties as a wife and a mother were over. Her career as a singer was
over. No single claim of friendship or interest from its past bound
her. When she had seen Elizabeth these last years of her being and
doing would be a sh