ive back.

"I feel better already, Oliver," she said, gratefully, as he helped her
to alight. Then hastening ahead of him, she ran up the walk and into the
hall, where her mother, looking wan and unnatural in her widow's cap,
greeted her with the question:

"Did you have a pleasant drive, dear?"

* * * * *

For six months Mrs. Pendleton hid her broken heart under a smile and
went softly about the small daily duties of the household, facing death,
as she had faced life, with a sublime unselfishness and the manner of a
lady. Her hopes, her joys, her fears even, lay in the past; there was
nothing for her to look forward to, nothing for her to dread in the
future. Life had given her all that it had to offer of bliss or sorrow,
and for the rest of her few years she would be like one who, having
finished her work before the end of the day, sits waiting patiently for
the words of release to be spoken. As the months went on, she moved like
a gentle shadow about her daughter's little home. So wasted and pallid
was her body that at times Virginia feared to touch her lest she should
melt like a phantom out of her arms. Yet to the last she never faltered,
never cried out for mercy, never sought to hasten by a breath that end
which was to her as the longing of her eyes, as the brightness of the
sunlight, as the sweetness of the springtime. Once, looking up from
Lucy's lesson which she was hearing, she said a little wistfully, "I
don't think, Jinny, it will be long now," and then checking herself
reproachfully, she added, "But God knows best. I can trust Him."

It was the only time that she had ever spoken of the thought which was
in her mind day and night, for when she could no longer welcome her
destiny, she had accepted it. Her faith, like her opinions, was
child-like and uncritical--the artless product of a simple and incurious
age. The strength in her had gone not into the building of knowledge,
but into the making of character, and she had judged all thought as
innocently as she had judged all literature, by its contribution to the
external sweetness of living. A child of ten might have demolished her
theories, and yet because of them, or in spite of them, she had
translated into action the end of all reasoning, the profoundest meaning
in all philosophy. But she was born to decorate instead of to reason.
Though her mind had never winnowed illusions from realities, her hands
had patiently wove