“Just so,” said the doctor; “poor soul, I suppose it was this one coming on that made her so—ah—captious—last night. I had very little hope of her from the moment I reached her bedside; but one comfort is that she had everything done for her that medical science could suggest. Harrison was with her in less than half an hour after she was taken, and stayed till I got there.” “Is she—why, Fred, you talk as if—she can’t be _dead_!” “She died about an hour ago, Alice. I would not let them send you any message, for, knowing how it would shock you, I wished to bring the news myself.” Alice made no reply, but stood white and still, her hands hanging clasped before her, gazing into the fire. She could find no tear for the unloved sister-in-law, there was no grief at her heart for the loss of one so antagonistic; but the shock of her death was all the more sudden and terrible. For Alice was quite conscious of the crisis in her spiritual life that had been revealed to her on the preceding night, to which, as to all crises, physical and psychological, she had been long unconsciously drawing near. In truth, Alice’s religion had never been to her nearly so real as the love she bore to her husband; there had been nothing between her and the Invisible, approaching or corresponding to the unfailing sympathy, the wordless comprehension and support, she found in him. Her love was real—her religion an unconscious make-believe; and reality had conquered. Upon her realization that the creed she had learned had grown all unreal to her (that it had never been other than unreal she was not yet wise enough to know), Mrs. Randolph’s sudden passing away into the unknown came as a lightning stroke to her own house of life. Nothing else could have shown her so clearly the change in her own creed, as this death, so near herself, yet with no loving grief to hide the sharp surprise, the sudden vacancy. She was utterly silent; indeed, what was she to say? the usual platitudes had become so unutterably meaningless. “She is better off,”—but Alice knew nothing whatever about it. “I hope she is happy!” “I trust she died at peace with God.” “May she rest in peace,”—none of these phrases would come to her lips. Only there rose before her mind a sudden sense of the dark unknown into which that soul had gone out; was it indeed to annihilation? She turned suddenly, and put out both hands to her husband; her eyes had a frightened, lost look. “Fred,” she cried, “what is death? is this life _all_? Shall we lose each other utterly one day, you and I? Is there _nothing_ beyond the grave?” He took her in his arms, it was all he could do for her in her sore need. “I don’t know, my darling,” he said; “if there be, science has no power to find it. We must only love each other all the more while we live.” “But why?” she cried, “what good will that do? it will only add to the misery of the one who is left behind. What is the use of love? or of living? unless we could die together.”