So gently Gabrielle soothed her, forgetting her own grief and weariness in Bertha’s more bitter suffering and remorse. It was very beautiful to see how tenderly and patiently she did it, and how her gentle words calmed down the other’s passionate sorrow. So different from one another their grief was. Gabrielle’s was a slow, weary pain, which, day by day, had gradually withered her, eating its way into her heart; then resting there, fixing itself there for ever. Bertha’s was like the quick, sudden piercing of a knife—a violent sorrow, that did its work in hours instead of years, convulsing body and soul for a little while, purifying them as with a sharp fire, then passing away and leaving no aching pain behind, but a new cleansed spirit. In the long summer twilight—the beautiful summer twilight that never sinks into perfect night—these two women lay side by side together; she that was oldest in suffering still comforting the other, until Bertha’s tears were dried, and exhausted with the grief that was so new to her, she lay silent in Gabrielle’s arms—both silent, looking into the summer night, and thinking of the days that were forever past. And sleeping at their feet lay Gabrielle’s child, not forgotten by her watchful love, though the night had deepened so that she could not see him where he lay. CHAPTER IV. “We will not stay here, sister,” Bertha had said. “This gloomy house will always make us sad. It is so dark and cold here, and Willie, more than any of us, needs the sunlight to strengthen and cheer him, poor boy.” “And I, too, shall be glad to leave it,” Gabrielle answered. So they went. They did not leave the village; it was a pretty, quiet place, and was full of old recollections to them—more bitter than sweet, perhaps, most of them—but still such as it would have been pain to separate themselves from entirely, as, indeed, it is always sad to part from things and places which years, either of joy or sorrow, have made us used to. So they did not leave it, but chose a little cottage, a mile or so from their former house—a pleasant little cottage in a dell, looking to the south, with honeysuckle and ivy twining together over it, up to the thatched roof. A cheerful little nook it was, not over bright or gay, but shaded with large trees all round it, through whose green branches the sunlight came, softened and mellowed, into the quiet rooms. An old garden, too, there was, closed in all round with elm trees—a peaceful, quiet place, where one would love to wander, or to lie for hours upon the grass, looking through the green leaves upward to the calm blue sky. To Gabrielle, wearied with her sorrow, this place was like an oasis in the desert. It was so new a thing to her to find rest anywhere: to find one little spot where she could lay her down, feeling no care for the morrow. Like one exhausted with long watching, she seemed now for a time to fall asleep.