ad been drawn with difficulty during the few years of comfort and
affection which she had enjoyed with Lester in Hyde Park. It was
really weeks before she could realize that Vesta was gone. The
emaciated figure which she saw for a day or two after the end did not
seem like Vesta. Where was the joy and lightness, the quickness of
motion, the subtle radiance of health? All gone. Only this pale,
lily-hued shell--and silence. Jennie had no tears to shed; only a
deep, insistent pain to feel. If only some counselor of eternal wisdom
could have whispered to her that obvious and convincing
truth--there are no dead.

Miss Murfree, Dr. Emory, Mrs. Davis, and some others among the
neighbors were most sympathetic and considerate. Mrs. Davis sent a
telegram to Lester saying that Vesta was dead, but, being absent,
there was no response. The house was looked after with scrupulous care
by others, for Jennie was incapable of attending to it herself. She
walked about looking at things which Vesta had owned or
liked--things which Lester or she had given her--sighing
over the fact that Vesta would not need or use them any more. She gave
instructions that the body should be taken to Chicago and buried in
the Cemetery of the Redeemer, for Lester, at the time of Gerhardt's
death, had purchased a small plot of ground there. She also expressed
her wish that the minister of the little Lutheran church in Cottage
Grove Avenue, where Gerhardt had attended, should be requested to say
a few words at the grave. There were the usual preliminary services at
the house. The local Methodist minister read a portion of the first
epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, and a body of Vesta's classmates
sang "Nearer My God to Thee." There were flowers, a white coffin, a
world of sympathetic expressions, and then Vesta was taken away. The
coffin was properly incased for transportation, put on the train, and
finally delivered at the Lutheran cemetery in Chicago.

Jennie moved as one in a dream. She was dazed, almost to the point
of insensibility. Five of her neighborhood friends, at the
solicitation of Mrs. Davis, were kind enough to accompany her. At the
grave-side when the body was finally lowered she looked at it, one
might have thought indifferently, for she was numb from suffering. She
returned to Sandwood after it was all over, saying that she would not
stay long. She wanted to come back to Chicago, where she could be near
Vesta and Gerhardt.

After the f