fragrance of the pines in winter and heard the
soft patter of summer rains on widespreading leaves. She saw David
walking at her side, and heard his laugh, sun-bright and glorious he
seemed, her Phoebus Apollo--the father of her little son.

She saw the terrible sea which she had crossed to come to him--the
white-crested waves, with turquoise lights and indigo depths, shifting
and sliding unceasingly where all the world seemed swallowed in space,
and the huge steamship so small a thing in the vast and perilous deep;
and now--now she was here. What was she? What was life?

She had tried to find him, her David, and had been shown the dead, and
the glory of the dead--all past and gone--her David's glory. Shown that
long, empty gallery resounding with those aged footsteps, and the
pictures--pictures--pictures--of men and women who had once been babes
like her little son and David's, now dead and gone--not one soul among
them all to greet her. Proud lords and dames in frames of gold; young
men and maidens in costly silks and velvets of marvellous dyes,
red-cheeked, red-lipped, and soullessly silent; and she, alone and
undefended in their midst, holding in her arms their last descendant.
All those painted fingers seemed lifted to point at her; those silent
red lips parted to cry out at her, "Look at this stranger claiming to be
one of us; send her away."

And David--her David--was one of these! What they had felt--what they
had thought and striven for--was it all intensified and concentrated in
him? Oh, if her soul could only reach to him, wherever he was, and
penetrate this impalpable veil that stretched between them! If her hands
could only touch him, her eyes look into his and see what lay in their
depths for her!

Then her babe stirred and tossed up his pretty hands, waking her from
her sad, vision-seeing trance. He opened his large, clear eyes, and
suddenly it seemed that her wish was granted,--that the veil was rent
and she was looking into David's eyes and seeing his soul free, no
longer chained by invisible links to those dead and gone beings, and
their traditions. This had been all a dream--a dream.

She gathered the child in her arms and held him with his sweet, warm
lips pressed to her breast and his soft little hand thrust in her bosom.
David's little son--David's little son! Surely all was good and well
with the world! Did not the old man say it was only gossip? Had not evil
things been said of David even on