Her desire was complied with; and for many a long winter night Zinka sat beside her by the same little white bed where the girl had once whispered to her in the delirium of her happiness that it seemed as if her heart would break with joy. With tenderest sympathy the young stepmother talked of the departed unweariedly with the girl, allowing her tears free course, without ever cruelly attempting to restrain the expression of her grief. And when Truyn, in despair over such endless grieving, unreasonably taxed his wife with exciting Ella's emotion, and with hindering her from forgetting, Zinka replied gently, "Let me alone; I know what I am doing. There is nothing more terrible, more dreadful than the spectre of a grief that has been violently stifled; it lurks in wait for us, and persecutes us all the more persistently, the more resolutely we thrust it from us. The memory of our beloved dead must not be banished, it must be tenderly welcomed and cherished, until in time it loses all bitterness, and is ever with us, sad, but very dear." Truyn listened incredulously, but a few weeks later he perceived with surprise, and with trembling delight that Gabrielle's pale cheeks began to show a faint colour, and that her weary gait grew more elastic. Then when he was alone with Zinka he kissed her gratefully, saying "I see you understand better than I how to comfort." "And from whom did I learn the art?" she asked in reply, with a loving glance, "do you not see that I am only repaying old debts?" With the first snowdrops in February came a golden-haired little brother for Gabrielle, who, by Zinka's desire was christened "Ossi." Thus Gabrielle learned to utter her dead lover's name without tears. She idolizes the little one, and sometimes smiles when she has him in her arms; he has given her a fresh interest in life. Georges who came to Paris the last of May, only to see the Truyns, and to find out especially how Gabrielle was, perceived this with pleasure, and said much that was encouraging to Truyn, who is still anxious about his sorrowing child. A hailstorm in spring prostrates, but does not kill. * * * But when a storm of hail just before harvest beats down the ripened ears, the grain never recovers. Bowed down to the earth, broken and blasted by the weight of the hailstones, the crop lies prostrate in the fields, only awaiting the hand that shall clear it away. * * * Never again will the Countess Lodrin rally. Had her health been less vigorous she might have died of agony, had her mind been less strong, she might have forgotten. But her health is perfect, and her mind clear as daylight.