t was not so hard, with this new-born love and
trust, to see the grave close over that dear mother. It was gilded
with the light of that day when "we shall rise again."

In these hours of bereavement Vida's heart went out with a longing
cry for her husband. The love that she had stifled and called dead
was there, deeper and purer. Now that she had been brought by this
divine mystery unto full sympathy with him, he was the one soul on
earth whose love she craved.

Perverse human heart! Here she was, no one to control her actions,
possessed of wealth, youth, beauty, freedom to journey to other
lands, and revel in the grand and beautiful of nature and art, yet
the one only thing she desired, or that would satisfy, was to creep
back into the niche she had filled in that other heart, that large,
pure soul that she had thrust from her in her wicked folly and
blindness. Now she would devote her life to searching for him, if
indeed he were still living, and the doubt brought a keen pang; or
had he, too, thrust her out and barred the door, so that she might
never more enter? Or--worse than death--had he given the place to
another, as she bade him do? It was a weary search, with this
terrible uncertainty shrouding it. She advertised in mystical
language, so none but he could comprehend it. She examined the church
records of the denomination with which he was connected, but found no
clue there.

She attended conventions where large companies of ministers were in
session, and eagerly looked them over, hoping and praying that her
eyes might fall on that one that her heart asked for. It was growing
exciting and absorbing, this strange search. She frequently visited
towns where a popular preacher or lecturer was announced, and made
one of the vast throng that passed about him; then, taking a
favourable position, rapidly scanned the upturned faces, wondering,
meanwhile, what that strange, subtle something is, by which we
recognise each other; that unerring consciousness, so that among
ten thousand faces, could we view them one by one, we know at a
glance that the one we seek is not there; we do not stop, and doubt,
and compare--we know.

She humbled herself to the very dust, and wrote letters far and near
to his ministerial friends, that brought only sorrowful replies. And
now there came a remembrance that he had often spoken of the far west
as a wide and promising field for labour; that some time he should
like to go there and b