"I learned that for years she had toiled and starved to hoard up a sum with which to build a monument to his memory, for he had never failed of his duty to her after all others had cast her out. Certainly he had his reward, not in the monument, but in the repentance which came to her after his death. I have never seen such sorrow for evil as the memory of his love wrought in her. For herself she desired only that the spot where she should be buried might be unknown. This longing to be forgotten has led me to believe that none desire to be remembered for the evil that is in them, but only for some truth, or beauty, or goodness by which they have linked their individual lives to the general life of the race. Even the lying epitaphs in cemeteries prove how we would fain have the dead arrayed on the side of right in the thoughts of their survivors. This wretched mother and human outcast, believing herself to have lost everything that makes it well to be remembered, craved only the mercy of forgetfulness." "And yet I think she died a Christian soul." "You knew her, then?" "I was with her in her last hours. She told me her story. She told me also of you, and that you would accept nothing for the monument you were at such care to make. It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt some desire to see you, and that I am here now to speak with you of--" A shudder passed over her. "After all, that was not a sad, but a joyous monument to fashion," she added, abruptly. "Aye, it was joyous. But to me the joyous and the sad are much allied in the things of this life." "And yet there might be one monument wholly sad, might there not?" "There might be, but I know not whose it would be." "If she you love should die, would not hers be so?" "Until I love, and she I love is dead, I cannot know," said Nicholas, smiling. "What builds the most monuments?" she asked, quickly, as though to retreat from her levity. "Pride builds many--splendid ones. Gratitude builds some, forgiveness some, and pity some. But faith builds more than these, though often poor, humble ones; and love!--love builds more than all things else together." "And what, of all things that monuments are built in memory of, is most loved and soonest forgotten?" she asked, with intensity. "Nay, I cannot tell that." "Is it not a beautiful woman? This, you say, is the monument of a poet. After the poet grows old, men love him for the songs he sang; they love the old soldier for the battles he fought, and the preacher for his remembered prayers. But a woman! Who loves her for the beauty she once possessed, or rather regards her not with the more distaste? Is there in history a figure so lonely and despised as that of the woman who, once the most beautiful in the world, crept back into her native land a withered hag? Or, if a woman die while she is yet beautiful, how long is she remembered? Her beauty is like heat and light--powerful only for those who feel and see it."