y they were on their way to
Bremen, summoned by cable to her sister's deathbed. She never heard from
him or of him again. Yet she had left her American address with his aunt
for any letters that might need to be forwarded, and a stiff little
note of thanks and farewell--a perfectly neutral note such as any friend
might give or receive. There followed weeks crowded with sorrow and
business (the sister was a widow without children, and she shared her
estate with her other sister); and Margaret imputed her deep depression
to these natural and sufficient causes. She rated herself for vanity in
reading her own meanings into a courteous young man's looks and his
intelligent interest in national difference of manners. She fostered her
shame with the New Englander's zest for self-torture. But one afternoon,
without warning, there fell upon her a deep and hopeless peace. It was
as if some invisible power controlled and changed all the currents of
her thought. She _knew_ that her friend was not faithless or careless;
he was dead. She began to weep gently, thinking pitifully of his old
father with the loud voice, and his fragile mother and the sister and
brother and the little nephew. "Poor people," she murmured, wishing, for
the first time in her life, to make some sign of her sorrow for them to
them, she who always paid her toll of sympathy, but dreaded it and knew
that she was clumsy. She remembered the day at the castle, and went
over again each word, each look. A sensation that she could not
understand, full of awe and sweetness, possessed her. It was
indescribable, unthinkable, but it was also irresistible. Under its
impulse she went to a trunk in another room, from which she had not yet
removed all the contents, and took out her Heidelberg photographs. She
said to herself that she would look at the scenes of that day. In her
search she came upon a package of her own pictures which had come the
morning of the day that she had gone. She could not remember any details
of receiving them, except that she had been at the photographer's the
day before and paid for them. When they came she was in too great
agitation (they were just packing) to more than fling them into a tray.
She could not tell why she took the _cartes_ out of the envelope and ran
them listlessly through her fingers; but at the last of the package she
uttered a cry. The last _carte_ was a picture of Max, with the
inscription in his own hand, "Thine for ever." It is