SHADOWS.
“My wife? She is dead!” said the man.
“God help you to bear it,” were the answering words of the woman.
“And you would have me do my duty?”
“You could do naught else. There are other things than love, my friend; there is honor, and we must abide by that—and the inevitable.”
“I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord;he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live: and whosoever believeth in me, shall never die.”
The last friend had paid his final tribute to the departed. All had gone save the husband, his little daughter, the mother—and a woman simply clad in black. Her face was pale, marked by delicate traceries of mental suffering—a suffering so intense that the whole contour was radiant with martyrdom and the inner spiritual beauty of her woman’s soul. Her eyes, earth brown and blazing with the hidden sunlight of her year’s sad spring, were fixed in mute appeal upon the still, white face within its house of immortality.
It was the husband now, who, taking her gently by the hand, lead her to the carriage.
Was it “kismet” that, by some grim coincidence, placed these two human, saddened souls in the same carriage—alone!
The way was long, and the roads as yet unsoftened by the Spring’s nestling bloom. For a while neither spoke, and then the woman’s voice vibrated through the silence like a breath of air light as the apple blossoms caroling in May, when leaf and bud unite in song to praise their creator.
“Dear, you and I are soon to say good bye; bysome strange fateful turn of Life’s orbit, we must say it here. You were always generous and loyal to her—you always will be. She has forgiven you, but bids me lead my life alone. The voice of circumstance says to us what we interpret it to say. It is in the needs of a high nature wherein doth lie nobility and honor. We loved; it was so to be, but we did not sin; therein lies the truest and purest love. You”——
The carriage stopped before the open grave, and as the woman watched the damp earth fall—kneeling, she dropped a single passion flower upon the coffin’s lid, and through her mist of tears beheld the cross; then murmuring “In His Name,” she entered the carriage—alone!
Faith Bigelow Savage.