A great and beautiful shell, not unlike a nautilus, was floating near us, on the incoming tide, and my companion motioned to me to step into this. I obeyed her, laughing, but without any hesitation. “Neither shall there be any more death,” I thought as I glanced over the rose-tinted edges of the frail thing into the water, deeper than any I had ever seen, but unclouded, so that I looked to the bottom of the sea. The girl herself stepped out upon the waves with a practiced air, and lightly drawing the great shell with one hand, bore me after her, as one bears a sledge upon ice. As we came into mid-water we began to meet others, some walking, as she did, some rowing or drifting like myself. Upon the opposite shore uprose the outlines of a more thickly settled community than any I had yet seen. Watching this with interest that deepened as we approached the shore, I selfishly or uncourteously forgot to converse with my companion, who did not disturb my silence until we landed. As she gave me her hand, she said in a quick, direct tone: “Well, Miss Mary, I see that you do not know me, after all.” I felt, as I had already done once or twice before, a certain social embarrassment (which in itself instructed me, as perpetuating one of the minor emotions of life below that I had hardly expected to renew) before my lovely guide, as I shook my head, struggling with the phantasmal memories evoked by her words. No, I did not know her. “I am Marie Sauvée. I _hope_ you remember.” She said these words in French. The change of language served instantly to recall the long train of impressions stored away, who knew how or where, about the name and memory of this girl. “Marie Sauvée! _You_--HERE!” I exclaimed in her own tongue. At the name, now, the whole story, like the bright side of a dark-lantern, flashed. It was a tale of sorrow and shame, as sad, perhaps, as any that it had been my lot to meet. So far as I had ever known, the little French girl, thrown in my way while I was serving in barracks at Washington, had baffled every effort I had made to win her affection or her confidence, and had gone out of my life as the thistle-down flies on the wind. She had cost me many of those precious drops of the soul’s blood which all such endeavor drains; and in the laboratory of memory I had labelled them, “Worse than Wasted,” and sadly wondered if I should do the same again for such another need, at just such hopeless expenditure, and had reminded myself that it was not good spiritual economy, and said that I would never repeat the experience, and known all the while that I should. Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air of Heaven, “without spot or any such thing”--here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to Him, perhaps, than I--_here_ was Marie Sauvée.