had stirred in her heart a
great love. How she had loved him! How she had feared that her love
would wear his out! How she had suffered when she decided that love
was something more than self-gratification, that even though for her
he should put aside the woman he had heedlessly married years before,
there could never be any happiness in such a union for either of them.
How many times in her own heart she had owned that the woman would not
have had the courage shown by the girl, for the girl did not realize
all she was putting aside. Yet the consciousness of his love, in
which she never ceased to believe, had kept her brave and young.

She rose and slowly entered the vault.

The odor of flowers, the odor of death was about it.

She lifted the lantern from the ground, and, with it raised above her
head, approached the open coffin that rested on the catafalque in the
centre of the tomb and mounted the two steps. She was conscious of no
fear, of no dread at the idea of once more, after eighteen years,
looking into the face of the man she had loved, who had carried a
great love for her into another world. But as she looked, her eyes
widened with fright. She bent lower over him. No cry burst from her
lips, but the hand holding the lantern lowered slowly, and she tumbled
down the two steps, and staggered back against the wall, where, behind
lettered slides, the dead Richmonds for six generations slept their
long sleep together. Her breast heaved up and down, as if life, like a
caged thing, were striving to escape. Yet no sound came from her
colorless lips, no tears were in her widened eyes.

The realizing sense of departed years had reached her heart at last,
and the shock was terrible. With a violent effort she recovered
herself. But the firm step, the fearless, hopeful face with which she
had approached the coffin of her dead lover were very different from
the blind manner in which she stumbled back to his bier, and the hand
which a second time raised the lantern trembled so that its wavering
light shed an added weirdness on the still face, so strange to her
eyes, and stranger still to her heart.

He had been a young man when they parted. To her he had remained
young. Now the hair about the brows was thin and white, the drooping
mustache that entirely concealed the mouth was grizzled; lines
furrowed the forehead, outlined the sunken eyes, and gave an added
thinness to the nostrils. She bent once more over the face, to