her own. But the attempt proved a
failure; she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would
continually wander away into space in search of Arthur.

She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was
dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands
idly clasped before her, out at the driving sleet and snow, Mr. Fraser
thought that he had never seen statue, picture, or woman of such
sweet, yet majestic beauty. But it had been filched from the features
of an immortal. The spirit-look which at times had visited her from a
child now continually shone upon her face, and to the sight of sinful
men her eyes seemed almost awful in their solemn calm and purity. She
smiled but seldom now, and, when she did, it was in those grey eyes
that the radiance began: her features scarcely seemed to move.

"What are you thinking of, Angela?"

"I am thinking, Mr. Fraser, that it is only fourteen weeks to-day
since Arthur died, and that it is very likely that I shall live
another forty or fifty years before I see him. I am only twenty-one,
and I am so strong. Even this shock has not hurt me."

"Why should you want to die?"

"Because all the beauty and light has gone out of my life; because I
prefer to trust myself into the hands of God rather than to the tender
mercies of the world; because he is there, and I am here, and I am
tired of waiting."

"Have you no fear of death?"

"I have never feared death, and least of all do I fear it now. Why,
the veriest coward would not shrink back when the man she loved was
waiting for her. And I am not a coward, and if I were told that I must
die within an hour, I could say, 'How beautiful upon the mountains are
the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!'
Cannot you understand me? If all your life and soul were wrapped up in
one person, and she died, would you not long to go to her?"

Mr. Fraser made no reply for a while, but in his turn gazed out at the
drifting snow, surely not more immaculately pure than this woman who
could love with so divine a love. At length he spoke.

"Angela, do you know that it is wrong to talk so? You have no right to
set yourself up against the decrees of the Almighty. In His wisdom He
is working out ends of which you are one of the instruments. Who are
you that you should rebel?"

"No one--a grain, an atom, a wind-tossed feather; but what am I to do
with my life, how am I to occupy all the coming yea