The pitiful
cry began again.

"To die, when life is so sweet! To be shut up in a coffin and buried in
a cold, dark grave! You don't love me, Reginald. If you did, you would
die too--with a laugh on your lips you know--then I should have that to
cheer me, and we should be together, and I should not be afraid. But now
you look so strangely, Reginald. Don't you care for me any more? Can you
let them take me away from this beautiful world and stay in it all by
yourself?

"I suppose you will give me a splendid funeral--you are so generous you
know--but I will not care whether the prison is pine or mahogany if I am
to be shut up in it all alone! And you will have a long procession, with
plumes and flowers and show, but you will leave me in the dreary
cemetery and you will come back to our home, where we have been so happy
together--so happy, just you and I--but you see you are a philosopher
and I do not know how to die!

"And some day you will forget me--men do such things they say--and
another woman will be your wife and I will be all alone!"

"Sister!" The abject man in the chair held out his hands in an agony of
entreaty, "Come here and help us--if you can!" and Evadne came swiftly
into the room, and, sitting down on the side of the bed, gathered the
pitiful little figure to her heart.

"It is not death but life," she said gently. "This body is not _you_.
The home of the soul is more beautiful than, any earthly home can ever
be. It is those who are left behind dear, who mourn, not those who go."

Elise Hawthorne laid her head on Evadne's shoulder like a tired child.
"But I am afraid," she whispered. "If this is true, and God is holy, I
am not fit, you know."

"Your Father loves you dear, for he sent his Son to die. The thief on
the cross was a sinner, yet Christ took him to Paradise. The fitness
must come from Jesus. His blood washes whiter than snow."

"But I have done nothing to earn it. I have lived for myself alone."

"We never can earn a gift, dear. God gives in a royal way. He says to
you only 'Believe I have given you life through my Son.'" Evadne had
taken the tiny Bible which she always carried from her pocket and was
turning its pages rapidly. "Here it is. Will you raise the blind, Mr.
Hawthorne, that your wife may see for herself? 'God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son,'--the best he had!--'that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish,' you see there is no death for those
who