ght well make any one cry to suddenly lose the pivot upon which his
emotions are swung. At any rate, Mrs. Morris cried. She said that she
cried all night, first because it seemed so spooky to see him whose
remains she had so recently buried on faith, waiving recognition in the
debris, dashing about now in so matter-of-fact a way.

And then she wept because, after all, he did not come.

This was the formal beginning of her sense of personal companionship in
the picture--companionship, yes, of delight in it, for there is even
delight in tears--in some situations in life. Especially is this true of
one whose emotions are her only guides, as seems to have been the case
with the Widow Morris.

After seeing him draw the window-sashes--and he had drawn them _down_,
ignoring her presence--she sat for hours, waiting for the rain to stop.
It seemed to have set in for a long spell, for when she finally fell
asleep, "from sheer disappointment, 'long towards morning," it was
still raining, but when she awoke the sun shone and all the windows in
the picture were up again.

This was a misleading experience, however, for she soon discovered that
she could not count upon any line of conduct by the man in the hotel, as
the fact that it had one time rained in the photograph at the same time
that it rained outside was but a coincidence and she was soon surprised
to perceive all quiet along the hotel piazza, not even an awning
flapping, while the earth, on her plane, was torn by storms.

On one memorable occasion when her husband had appeared, flapping the
window-panes from within with a towel, she had thought for one brief
moment that he was beckoning to her, and that she might have to go to
him, and she was beginning to experience terror, with shortness of
breath and other premonitions of sudden passing, when she discovered
that he was merely killing flies, and she flurriedly fanned herself with
the asbestos mat which she had seized from the stove beside her, and
staggered out to a seat under the mulberries, as she stammered:

"I do declare, Morris'll be the death of me yet. He's 'most as much care
to me dead as he was alive--I made sure--made sure he'd come after me!"

Then, feeling her own fidelity challenged, she hastened to add:

"Not that I hadn't rather go to him than to take any trip in the world,
but--but I never did fancy that hotel, and since I've got used to seein'
him there so constant, I feel sure that's where we'd put