"Which will develop next spring into other leaves and perhaps into a new branch. All summer long your leaf has rustled and fluttered joyously over the certainty that a richer and fuller life would come after it, a life that it was providing for through the sunny days and dewy nights. There is no death here, only change for the better. And so with everything that has bloomed and flourished in this garden during the past season, provision has been made for new and more abundant life. All these bright but falling leaves and fading flowers are merely Nature's robes, ornaments that she is throwing carelessly aside as she withdraws for a little time from her regal state. Wait till she appears again next spring, as young, fresh, and beautiful as when, like Eve, she saw her first bright morning. Come and see her upon her throne next June. Nature full of death! Why, Mr. Gregory, she speaks of nothing but life to those who understand her language." "O that you would teach it to me!" he said, with a deeper meaning than she detected. "Again," she continued, "our theology does not represent death as making havoc anywhere. It is sin that makes the havoc, and death is only one of its consequences. And even this enemy God compels to work for the good of His friends. Do not think," she continued, coming a step nearer in her earnestness, "that I make such allusions to pain you, but only in my sincere wish to help you, and illustrate my meaning by something you know so well. Did death make havoc in your mother's case? Was it not rather a sombre-liveried janitor that opened for her the gates of heaven?" He was deeply touched, and turned away his face. After a moment he continued his walk, that they might get further away from the house and the danger of interruption. He suddenly startled Annie by saying, in a tone of harsh and intense bitterness, "Her death made 'havoc' for me. If she had lived I might have been a good man instead of the wretch I am. If death as janitor opens the gates of heaven, your religion teaches that it also opens the gates of hell. How can I love a God who shuts up the sinful in an inferno--in dungeons of many and varied tortures, and racks them forever? Can I, just to escape all this, pretend that I love Him, when in truth I fear and dread Him unspeakably? No, I'll never be a hypocrite." Tears glistened in Annie's eyes as he turned to look at her. "You pity me," he said, more gently. "Your God does not. If He wanted to be loved He should never have revealed a hell."