threw him continually into my care. I do not know
when he began to understand, but from the hour he could
speak he whispered your name in his prayers. But it was only
lately that, of himself, he discovered your identity. The
love I felt for you in my early days has grown with me. It
has survived in my heart when all other passions, all
prides, all ambitions, long ago died. I leave you, I hope, a
good memory of me--a man who loved you more than he loved
himself, who for eighteen years has loved you silently, yet
never ceased to grieve for you. But I fear that I have
bequeathed to my son, with the name and estate of his
father, my hopeless love for you. If, by chance, what I fear
be true,--if, when bereft of me, he seeks you out, as be
sure he will,--deal gently with him for his father's sake.

"There was an old compact between us, dear. I mention it now
only in the hope that you may not have forgotten--indeed,
in the certainty that you have not. I know you so well.
Remember it, I beg of you, only to ignore it. It was made,
you know, when one of us expected to watch the passing of
the other. This is different. If this reminds you of it, it
reminds you only to warn you that Time cancels all such
compacts. It is my voice that assures you of it.

"FELIX R."

Underneath, written in letters, like, yet so unlike, were the words,
"My father died this morning. F. R." and an uncertain mark as though
he had begun to add "Jr." to the signature, and realized that there
was no need.

The letter fell from her hands.

For a long time she sat silent.

Dead! She had never felt that he could die while she lived. A
knowledge that he was living,--loving her, adoring her hopelessly--was
necessary to her life. She felt that she could not go on without it.
For eighteen years she had compared all other men, all other emotions
to him and his love, to find them all wanting.

And he had died.

She looked at the date of the letter. He would be resting in that tomb
she remembered so well, before she could reach the place; that spot
before which they had often talked of Death, which had no terrors for
either of them.

She rose. She pushed away her untouched supper, hurriedly drank a
glass of wine, and, crossing the hall to her bedroom, opened a tiny
box that stood locked upon her dressing table. She took from it a
picture--a miniature