"And then I shall be with him again, where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but where they are as the angels of God in heaven?" "That is the reunion to which we all look forward; that is the faith that looks through death." There was a long interval of silence, and then she said slowly: "If I could see him with these bodily eyes, see him as I see you looking at me in the firelight, I should be sure that the dream is not a dream." "You have been privileged to understand the mind of your dead friend; to know that he is near you. That should be enough. Only to the rarest natures is it given to see. You questioned me about this possibility of vision once before; and I told you that I had known of one instance when the eyes of the living beheld the dead, in the last moments of earthly life." "I do not think those moments are far off for me, my friend," Vera said softly. Francis Symeon, in whose philosophy death was emancipation, did not say the kind of thing that Susan Amphlett would have said in the circumstances. She no doubt would have told Vera that she was talking nonsense, and that she was "going to get quite, quite well, and live for years and years and years, and have a real good time." Mr. Symeon took her attenuated hand in his friendly grasp, and sat by her for some time in silence before he bade her his calm adieu, patted the dog, nestling against her knees, and went quietly out of the room and out of the house. He did not think that he would ever again be sitting in the firelight in that room, hearing the low sad voice. He knew that he had shut the door upon a life that was measured by moments. Three days after that Vera was unwontedly restless. There had been a long telegram from her husband in the morning, announcing his return for that night. He had finished all his business with his trainer, engaged the jockeys who were to ride for him next year, and he was coming back to London--he did not say "coming home"--heartily sick of Newmarket, and his Suffolk shooting, and the friends who had been with him. "Why do we do these things and call them pleasures?" He ended the message with that question, as with a moral. "Poor Claude!" sighed his wife, as she folded the thin slips of paper and laid them among her books; and then she thought: "How much happier for him if he had stayed with the Benedictines!" * * * * *