returned, she would have thrown herself into
his arms, and cried out, "O Stephen, I do love you, I do trust you." But
Stephen made an inexorable gesture of his hand, which said more than any
words, "No! no! do not deceive yourself," and was gone.

And thus they parted for ever, this man and this woman who had been for
two years all in all to each other, who had written on each other's hearts
and lives characters which eternity itself could never efface.

Hope lived long in Stephen's heart. He built too much on the memories of
his magnetic power over Mercy, and he judged her nature too much by his
own. He would have loved and followed her to the end, in spite of her
having become a very outcast of crime, if she had continued to love him;
and it was simply impossible for him to conceive of her love's being
either less or different. But, when in a volume of poems which Mercy
published one year after their parting, he read the following sonnet, he
knew that all was indeed over:--

DIED.

Not by the death that kills the body. Nay,
By that which even Christ bade us to fear
Hath died my dead.
Ah, me! if on a bier
I could but see him lifeless stretched to-day,
I 'd bathe his face with tears of joy, and lay
My cheek to his in anguish which were near
To ecstasy, if I could hold him dear
In death as life. Mere separations weigh
As dust in balances of love. The death
That kills comes only by dishonor. Vain
To chide me! vain! And weaker to implore,
O thou once loved so well, loved now no more!
There is no resurrection for such slain,
No miracle of God could give thee breath!

* * * * *

Mercy Philbrick lived thirty years after the events described in these
pages. It was a life rich to overflowing, yet uneventful, as the world
reckons: a life lonely, yet full of companionship; sady yet full of cheer;
hard, and yet perpetually uplifted by an inward joy which made her very
presence like sunshine, and made men often say of her, "Oh, she has never
known sorrow." This was largely the result of her unquenchable gift of
song, of the true poet's temperament, to which life is for ever new,
beautiful, and glad. It was also the result of her ever-increasing
spirituality of nature. This took no shape of creed, worship, or what the
world's common consent calls religion. Most of the words spoken by the
teachers of churches repelled Mercy by their monotonou