went
deeper and deeper into sorrow and wrong doing. When I dropped all
self-delusion and desperate striving, and stood still, asking to be
shown the right, then he put out his hand and through much tribulation
led me to convictions that I dare not disobey. Our friendship may be a
happy one if we accept and use it as we should. Let it be so, and for
the little while that I remain, let us live honestly before heaven and
take no thought for the world's opinion."

Adam might have owned the glance she bent upon her husband, so clear, so
steadfast was it; but the earnestness was all her own, and blended with
it a new strength that seemed a late compensation for lost love and
waning life. Remembering the price both had paid for it, Moor gratefully
accepted the costly friendship offered him, and soon acknowledged both
its beauty and its worth.

"One question more; Sylvia, how long?"

It was very hard to answer, but folding the sharp fact in the gentlest
fancy that appeared to her she gave him the whole truth.

"I shall not see the spring again, but it will be a pleasant time to lay
me underneath the flowers."

Sylvia had not known how to live, but now she proved that she did know
how to die. So beautifully were the two made one, the winning girl, the
deep-hearted woman, that she seemed the same beloved Sylvia, yet Sylvia
strengthened, purified, and perfected by the hard past, the solemn
present. Those about her felt and owned the unconscious power, which we
call the influence of character, and which is the noblest that gives
sovereignty to man or woman.

So cheerfully did she speak of it, so tranquilly did she prepare to meet
it, that death soon ceased to be an image of grief or fear to those
about her, and became a benignant friend, who, when the mortal wearies,
blesses it with a brief sleep, that it may wake immortal. She would have
no sad sick-chamber, no mournful faces, no cessation of the wholesome
household cares and joys, that do so much to make hearts strong and
spirits happy. While strength remained, she went her round of daily
duties, doing each so lovingly, that the most trivial became a delight,
and taking unsuspected thought for the comfort or the pleasure of those
soon to be left behind, so tenderly, that she could not seem lost to
them, even when she was gone.

Faith came to her, and as her hands became too weak for anything but
patient folding, every care slipped so quietly into Faith's, that few
percei