o herself. "Scarce
breathing is the summer night--waiting it doth seem for something to
give it life. The leaves wait--wait for the evening breeze to touch
them into morion. The valley waiteth--waiteth for the song of the
pilgrim to break its hush with gladness. So waiteth my soul for sight
of a face that shall drive back the shadows of fear. So waiteth my
heart for the sound of a voice that shall stir the silence of the
waiting into wild glad music. Will he come? Or will--but no, no--it
can not, can not be that he will come no more. The God that fashioned
me of dust formed likewise the mystery of life, my love for him and his
for me. . . . And lo, then did the hand of Jehovah make the feet of
him I love to enter in upon the path my feet do tread. So hath my soul
been bound to his soul and there are no more two souls, but one soul.
And having wrought thus blessedly, will God play with the love he hath
put in a woman's heart and bring to her soul such agony as doth wring
drops of blood from her? Nay, nay! It can not be! He must come! He
will come! Hasten, my beloved; I am waiting!"

Mary walked around the circular pool slowly. As she did so, the
crowing of a cock, its sharpness muffled by some distance, sounded on
the stillness. "The cock croweth the midnight hour," she said as the
last faint vibration died. "Until the crowing of the cock did he bid
me wait to see his face. Yea, until the breaking of the day will I
wait. Until the sunset of my life will I wait. Yea, even until the
Resurrection of the dead will I wait to see his face!"

She crossed the garden and back, paused, and raised her face to the
vault above where the moon was casting floods of silver over the
billowing clouds. She sighed and the words she spoke were breathed out
softly as if they too were a part of the passing night. "The hours
move on and naught there is but silence! What a silence it is! Like a
pall hangeth it over the Judean hills! Like a shroud falleth it over
Olivet! Like grave wrappings huggeth it the valley! God! The silence
of this night! Hath there been before such silence? It doth make of
itself feet that tread upon my soul and, treading, leave wounds with
living tongues which call in agony, 'I am waiting! I am waiting in the
garden!' No sound cometh to break this that oppresseth? The silence
deepens and its mystery doth affright my soul!"

For a moment she stood under the flood-light from above like