she waked up suddenly,
looked at me, and said, "I know you, you are my friend." She never would
call me her cousin, I was always her friend. Then she sat up in bed,
with her eyes wide open, and said, as if stating a problem which had
been put by for my solution, "I should like to see my mother."

How our hearts are rent by the unquestioning faith of children, when
they come to test the love which has so often worked what seemed to them
miracles,--and ask of it miracles indeed! I tried to explain to her the
continued existence of her beautiful mother, and she listened to it as
if her eyes drank in all that I could say, and more. But the apparent
distance between earth and heaven baffled her baby mind, as it so often
and so sadly baffles the thoughts of us elders. I wondered what precise
change seemed to her to have taken place. This all-fascinating Laura,
whom she adored, and who had yet never been to her what other women are
to their darlings,--did heaven seem to put her farther off, or bring her
more near? I could never know. The healthy child had no morbid
questionings; and as she had come into the world to be a sunbeam, she
must not fail of that mission. She was kicking about the bed, by this
time, in her nightgown, and holding her pink little toes in all sorts of
difficult attitudes, when she suddenly said, looking me full in the
face: "If my mother was so high up that she had her feet upon a star,
do you think that I could see her?"

This astronomical apotheosis startled me for a moment, but I said
unhesitatingly, "Yes," feeling sure that the lustrous eyes that looked
in mine could certainly see as far as Dante's, when Beatrice was
transferred from his side to the highest realm of Paradise. I put my
head beside hers upon the pillow, and stayed till I thought she was
asleep.

I then followed Kenmure into Laura's chamber. It was dusk, but the
after-sunset glow still bathed the room with imperfect light, and he lay
upon the bed, his hands clenched over his eyes.

There was a deep bow-window where Laura used to sit and watch us,
sometimes, when we put off in the boat. Her aeolian harp was in the
casement, breaking its heart in music. A delicate handkerchief was
lodged between the cushions of the window-seat,--the very handkerchief
she used to wave, in summer days long gone. The white boats went sailing
beneath the evening light, children shouted and splashed in the water, a
song came from a yacht, a steam-whistle s