weeping group
that her earthly pilgrimage was over.

No one spoke. All knelt silently, with clasped hands, beside the couch,
until Eva, as if roused from a dream, shrieked, "She will never come
back again!" and with passionate grief threw herself upon the lifeless
form to kiss the still face and beseech her to open her dear eyes once
more and not leave her.

How often she had remained away from the invalid in order to let her
aunt point out the path for her own higher happiness whilst Els nursed
her mother; but now that she had left her, she suddenly felt what she
had possessed and lost in her love. It seemed as if hitherto she had
walked beneath the shadow of leafy boughs, and her mother's death
had stripped them all away as an autumn tempest cruelly tears off
the foliage. Henceforth she must walk in the scorching sun without
protection or shelter. Meanwhile she beheld in imagination fierce flames
blazing brightly from the dark soot--the forge fire of life, to which
the dead woman's last words had referred. She knew what her mother had
wished to say, but at the present time she lacked both the desire and
the strength to realise it.

For a time each remained absorbed by individual grief. Then the father
drew both girls to his heart and confessed that, with their mother's
death life, already impoverished by the loss of his only son, had been
bereft of its last charm. His most ardent desire was to be summoned soon
to follow the departed ones.

Els summoned up her courage and asked: "And we--are we nothing to you,
father?"

Surprised by this rebuke, he started, removed his wet handkerchief from
his eyes, and answered: "Yes, yes--but the old do not reckon Ay, much is
left to me. But he who is robbed of his best possession easily forgets
the good things remaining, and good you both are."

He kissed his daughter lovingly as he spoke, as if wishing to retract
the words which had wounded her; then gazing at the still face of the
dead, he said: "Before you dress her, leave her alone with me for a
time----There is a wild turmoil here and here"--he pointed to his breast
and brow--"and yet The last hours----There is so much to settle and
consider in a future without her With her, with her dear calm features
before my eyes----"

Here a fresh outburst of grief stifled his voice; but Els pointed to the
image of the Virgin on the wall and beckoned to her sister.

Wholly engrossed by her own sorrow, Eva had scarcely heeded he