new herbage tinted the earth with delicate green.

Ilse returned from the cemetery with Palla. Her black veil and
garments made of her gold hair and blond skin a vivid beauty that
grief had not subdued.

That deathless courage which was part of her seemed to sustain the
clear glow of her body's vigour as it upheld her dauntless spirit.

"Did you see Jim in the chapel?" she asked quietly.

Palla nodded. She had seen Marya, also. After a little while Ilse said
gravely:

"I think it no treachery to creed when one submits to the equally
vital belief of another. I think our creed includes submission,
because that also is part of love."

Palla lifted her face in flushed surprise:

"Is there any compromising with truth?" she asked.

"I think love is the greatest truth. What difference does it make how
we love?"

"Does not our example count? You had the courage of your belief. Do
you counsel me to subscribe to what I do not believe by acquiescing in
it?"

Ilse closed her sea-blue eyes as though fatigued. She said dreamily:

"I think that to believe in love and mating and the bearing of
children is the only important belief in the world. But under what
local laws you go about doing these things seems to be of minor
importance,--a matter, I should say, of personal inclination."

Ilse wished to go home. That is, to her own apartment, where now were
enshrined all her memories of this dead man who had given to her
womanhood that ultimate crown which in her eyes seemed perfect.

She said serenely to Palla: "Mine is not the loneliness that craves
company with the living. I have a long time to wait; that is all. And
after a while I shall not wait alone.

"So you must not grieve for me, darling. You see I know that Jack
lives. It's just the long, long wait that calls for courage. But I
think it is a little easier to wait alone until--until there are two
to wait--for him----"

"Will you call me when you want me, Ilse?"

"Always, darling. Don't grieve. Few women know happiness. I have known
it. I know it now. It shall not even die with me."

She smiled faintly and turned to enter her doorway; and Palla
continued on alone toward that dwelling which she called home.

The mourning which she had worn for her aunt, and which she had worn
for John Estridge that morning, she now put off, although vaguely
inclined for it. But she shrank from the explanations in which it was
certain she must become involved when on duty at t