ded, deadens grief.
She was no longer in this world of torture. That helped me.

* * * * *

The next I knew, it was the sun, and not the moon which was shining on
me.

The wind had stilled its sobbing in the trees.

Only the rushing of the river sounded in my ears.

I rose slowly, and mounted the steps.

A tiny white marble mosque of wonderful beauty--for he who erected it
was one of the world's great artists, whose works will live to glorify
his name and his art when all his follies shall have been
forgotten--stood in a court paved with marble.

It was encircled with a low coping of the whitest of stone. Over this
low wall vines were already growing, and the woodbine that was mingled
with it was stained with those glorious tints in which Nature says to
life, "Even death is beautiful."

The wide bronze doors on either side were open.

I accepted the fact without even wondering why--or asking myself who,
in opening them, had discovered my presence!

I entered.

For a brief time I stood once more within the room where she lay.

An awful peace fell on my soul, as if her soul had whispered in the
words we had so often read together:

"I lie so composedly
Now in my bed--"

I knew at last, as I gazed, that all her life, and all mine, as well,
had been to his profit. That out of this, too, he had wrought some of
his greatness.

The interior of the vault was of red marble, and, such of chiselling
as there was done, seemed wonderful to me even in my frame of mind. I
took it all in, through unwilling, though fascinated eyes.

I have never seen it since. I can never forget it.

Yet art is, and always has been, so much to me, that I could not help,
even in my strangely wrought-up mental condition, comprehending and
admiring his scheme and the masterly manner in which he had worked it
out.

At my feet, as I stood on the threshold, was an elaborate scroll
engraved on the stone and surrounded with a wreath of leaves, that
vied with the tombs of the old world. As I gazed at it, and read the
gothic letters in which it was set forth that this monument was
erected in adoration of this woman, how well I remembered the day when
we had crouched together over those stones in the crypt at Certosa, to
admire the chiselling of Donatello which had inspired this.

There was a space left for the signature of the artist, which would, I
knew, some day be written there boldly enough!