"She insists that she must see you to-night," said my Aunt Lucretia, when I reached the house. She led me up the old, familiar stairs, and down the great hall to Eloise’s room. She stopped at the door. "You will find her very brave," said my Aunt, "very brave, and so must you be," she added, giving me a quick look. Then she opened the door, and I stood looking at Eloise, with drawn, tied lips, and a great choking in my throat, trying to return the smile she was giving me from among her pillows. I stood still, I could not move, my limbs seemed to have caught the dead numbness of my heart. "I want you right here by me a moment, Jack," she said calmly. "You’ll let him sit on the side of the bed, Miss Rose, just a moment. I’ll not exert myself." She was more beautiful than ever. Her brave body had lost none of its suppleness and grace; her face shone, and over the pillow her hair was massed in great red-gold waves against the white of the linen. "See," she said, taking my hand, "see, Jack, I can move my head and both my arms. Isn’t that fine? And the doctor says I shall always be able to do that, and, well—" she smiled, "he says there is no reason why I should not outlive all of you to be an old woman. A crippled old woman—" I turned my head quickly. As she had spoken I saw again the brave, beautiful creature, coming in head-long flight at the six-foot bar, and the triumphant smile that lit her face, sky-lined forever in my memory, as she lifted her horse almost straight up towards the sky. She was speaking now to the nurse. "If you please, just a moment Miss Rose—Aunt Lucretia, I would like to speak to Jack alone. I shall not exert myself." I heard them go out. "There! I have been thinking, Jack, all these weeks—one can think so very much lying in bed, and see so very, very far. I have been thinking and seeing, Jack. It’s so easy to think and so hard to see. But—but—I have prayed, too, about it—to help me see. Praying is seeing’s eyesight, Jack. I want you to promise me something. It is what I have seen in my prayer—it is the last thing I shall ever ask of you—for you have done me so many favors, dear Jack." I could not speak. "The Earl—Colonel Goff—they let me see him to-day. It hurt me more than my own hurt to see the poor man suffer so in the blame he puts upon himself for the accident. He won’t see, Jack,—he can’t—that it was God’s way of settling it—God’s way. For He alone knew how foolish I was—how wicked to sell myself as I did—and how my heart, though I did not know it till that day, Jack—has always been yours!" I took her in my arms, my face pressed against her cheek. She lay still, patting my face with her hand and saying: "I am—it is—well, it seems also to be one of God’s ways: ’We look before and after And pine for what is not.’" I heard her try to laugh in her old, brave way. She was looking again into my eyes, and I sat holding her hand.