s washed it out as it has washed out mountains and
continents." She raised herself on her elbow. "And what if we could help
mankind, and leave the traces of our work upon it to the end? Mankind is
only an ephemeral blossom on the tree of time; there were others before
it opened; there will be others after it has fallen. Where was man in
the time of the dicynodont, and when hoary monsters wallowed in the mud?
Will he be found in the aeons that are to come? We are sparks, we are
shadows, we are pollen, which the next wind will carry away. We are
dying already; it is all a dream.

"I know that thought. When the fever of living is on us, when the
desire to become, to know, to do, is driving us mad, we can use it as
an anodyne, to still the fever and cool our beating pulses. But it is a
poison, not a food. If we live on it it will turn our blood to ice;
we might as well be dead. We must not, Waldo; I want your life to be
beautiful, to end in something. You are nobler and stronger than I," she
said; "and as much better as one of God's great angels is better than a
sinning man. Your life must go for something."

"Yes, we will work," he said.

She moved closer to him and lay still, his black curls touching her
smooth little head.

Doss, who had lain at his master's side, climbed over the bench, and
curled himself up in her lap. She drew her skirt up over him, and the
three sat motionless for a long time.

"Waldo," she said, suddenly, "they are laughing at us."

"Who?" he asked, starting up.

"They--the stars!" she said, softly. "Do you not see? There is a little
white, mocking finger pointing down at us from each one of them! We are
talking of tomorrow and tomorrow, and our hearts are so strong; we are
not thinking of something that can touch us softly in the dark and make
us still forever. They are laughing at us Waldo."

Both sat looking upward.

"Do you ever pray?" he asked her in a low voice.

"No."

"I never do; but I might when I look up there. I will tell you," he
added, in a still lower voice, "where I could pray. If there were a wall
of rock on the edge of a world, and one rock stretched out far, far into
space, and I stood alone upon it, alone, with stars above me, and stars
below me,--I would not say anything; but the feeling would be prayer."

There was an end to their conversation after that, and Doss fell asleep
on her knee. At last the night-wind grew very chilly.

"Ah," she said, shivering, and d