n;
We have hurt each other often;
We shall again,
When we pine because we miss each other,
And do not understand
How the written words are so much colder
Than eye and hand.
I kiss thee, dear, for all such pain
Which we may give or take;
Buried, forgiven, before it comes
For our love's sake!

"The second kiss, my darling,
Is full of joy's sweet thrill;
We have blessed each other always;
We always will.
We shall reach until we feel each other,
Past all of time and space;
We shall listen till we hear each other
In every place;
The earth is full of messengers,
Which love sends to and fro;
I kiss thee, darling, for all joy
Which we shall know!

"The last kiss, oh, my darling,
My love--I cannot see
Through my tears, as I remember
What it may be.
We may die and never see each other,
Die with no time to give
Any sign that our hearts are faithful
To die, as live.
Token of what they will not see
Who see our parting breath,
This one last kiss, my darling, seals
The seal of death!"

It was on my sixteenth birthday that I copied these letters and poems of
Esther Wynn's. I kept them, with a few other very precious things, in a
curious little inlaid box, which came from Venice, and was so old that in
many places its sides were worm-eaten. It was one of my choicest
treasures, and I was never separated from it.

When I was twenty years old I had been for two years a happy wife, for one
year a glad mother, and had for some time remembered Esther only in the
vague, passing way in which happy souls recall old shadows of the griefs
of other hearts. As my boy entered on a second summer he began to droop a
little, and the physician recommended that we should take him to the
sea-side; so it came to pass that on the morning of my twentieth birthday
I was sitting, with my baby in my arms, on a rocky sea-shore, at one of
the well-known summer resorts of the New Hampshire coast. Near me sat a
woman whose face had interested me strangely ever since my arrival. She
seemed an invalid; but there was an atmosphere of overflowing vitality
about her, in spite of her feebleness, which made her very presence
stimulating and cheering to every one. I had longed to speak with her, but
as yet had not done so. While I sat watching her face and my baby's, and
the face of the sea, she was joined by her husband, who had just come from
a walk i