id not move. Her companion watched her furtively, expecting to see
some sign of profound emotion, or of grief controlled, or at least the
shadow of a quiet sadness. But there was nothing, and after two or
three minutes Angela rose deliberately, went up the remaining steps,
and pressed her lips upon the first letters of Giovanni's name. She
turned and descended the steps with a serene expression, as Madame
Bernard got up from her knees.

'Death was jealous of me,' Angela said.

She had never heard of Erinna; she did not know that a maiden poetess
had made almost those very words immortal in one lovely broken line
that has come down to us from five and twenty centuries ago. In the
Everlasting Return they fell again from a maiden's lips, but they
roused no response; Madame Bernard took them for a bit of girlish
sentiment, and scarcely heeded them, while she wondered at Angela's
strangely calm manner.

They walked back slowly along the straight way between the tombs.

'I loved him living and I love him dead,' said the young novice
slowly. 'He cannot come back to me, but some day I may go to him.'

'Yes,' answered Madame Bernard without conviction.

The next world had always seemed very vague to her; and besides, poor
Giovanni had been a soldier, and she knew something of military men,
and wondered where they went when they died.

'You are a very good woman,' Angela continued, following her own train
of thought; 'do you think it is wrong for a nun to love a dead man?'

'Dear me!' exclaimed the little Frenchwoman in some surprise. 'How can
one love a man who is dead? It is impossible; consequently it is not
wrong!'

Angela looked at her quickly and then walked on.

'There is no such thing as death,' she said.

It was Filmore Durand's odd speech that had come back to her often
during two years; when she repeated it to herself she saw his portrait
of Giovanni, which still hung in Madame Bernard's sitting-room, and
presently it was not a picture seen in memory, but Giovanni himself.

Madame Bernard shrugged her shoulders and smiled vaguely.

'Death is a fact,' she said prosaically. 'It is the reason why we
cannot live for ever!'

The reason was not convincing to Angela, but as she saw no chance of
being understood, she went back to the starting-point.

'Then you do not think it can possibly be wrong for a nun to love some
one who is dead?' she asked, her tone turning the statement into a
question.

'Of course