ld meet again had been
fulfilled. They had met, and each had found the other unchanged; and
Adelaide had begun to yield to the conviction that her sister's love was
love, pure and simple, and not pity. Since his death she had continued
to live in the town in which their married life had been passed--a life
which for her was just beginning to be happy--that is to say, she was
just learning to allow herself to be happy, in the firm assurance of his
unalterable love and devotion, when the summons came; a sharp attack, a
short illness, all over--eyes closed, lips, too--silent before her for
evermore.

It has often been my fate to hear criticisms both on von Francius and
his wife, and upon their conduct. This I know, that she never forgave
herself the step she had taken in her despair. Her pride never recovered
from the burden laid upon it--that she had taken the initiative, had
followed the man who had said farewell to her. Bad her lot was to be,
sad, and joyless, whether in its gilded cage, or linked with the man
whom she loved, but to be with whom she had had to pay so terrible a
price. I have never heard her complain of life and the world; yet she
can find neither very sweet, for she is an extremely proud woman, who
has made two terrible failures in her affairs.

Von Francius, before he died, had made a mark not to be erased in the
hearts of his musical compatriots. Had he lived--but that is vain!
Still, one feels--one can now but feel--that, as his widow said to me,
with matter-of-fact composure:

"He was much more hardly to be spared than such a person as I, Herr
Helfen. If I might have died and left him to enrich and gladden the
world, I should have felt that I had not made such a mess of everything
after all."

Yet she never referred to him as "my poor husband," or by any of those
softening terms by which some people approach the name of a dead dear
one; all the same we knew quite well that with him life had died for
her.

Since his death, she and I had been in frequent communication; she was
editing a new edition of his works, for which, after his death, there
had been an instant call. It had lately been completed; and the music of
our former friend shall, if I mistake not, become, in the best and
highest sense of the word, popular music--the people's music. I had been
her eager and, she was pleased to say, able assistant in the work.

We journeyed on together through the winter country, and I glanced at
her