While Faith was disposed of, and the house still, auntie and I took our knitting and spent a regular old woman’s morning at the south window in the dining-room. In the afternoon Mrs. Bland came over, babies and all, and sent up her card to Mrs. Forceythe. Supper-time came, and still there had not been a word of Roy. I began to wonder at, while I respected, this unusual silence. While her mother was putting Faith to bed, I went into my room alone, for a few moments’ quiet. An early dark had fallen, for it had clouded up just before sunset. The dull, gray sky and narrow horizon shut down and crowded in everything. A soldier from the village, who has just come home, was walking down the street with his wife and sister. The crickets were chirping in the meadows. The faint breath of the maple came up. I sat down by the window, and hid my face in both my hands. I must have sat there some time, for I had quite forgotten that I had company to entertain, when the door softly opened and shut, and some one came and sat down on the couch beside me. I did not speak, for I could not, and, the first I knew, a gentle arm crept about me, and she had gathered me into her lap and laid my head on her shoulder, as she might have gathered Faith. “There,” she said, in her low, lulling voice, “now tell Auntie all about it.” I don’t know what it was, whether the voice, or touch, or words, but it came so suddenly,--and nobody had held me for so long,--that everything seemed to break up and unlock in a minute, and I threw up my hands and cried. I don’t know how long I cried. She passed her hand softly to and fro across my hair, brushing it away from my temples, while they throbbed and burned; but she did not speak. By and by I sobbed out:-- “Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” as Faith sobs out in the dark. It seemed to me that I must have help or die. “Yes, dear. I understand. I know how hard it is. And you have been bearing it alone so long! I am going to help you, and you must tell me all you can.” The strong, decided words, “I am going to help you,” gave me the first faint hope I have had, that I _could_ be helped, and I could tell her--it was not sacrilege--the pent-up story of these weeks. All the time her hand went softly to and fro across my hair. Presently, when I was weak and faint with the new comfort of my tears, “Aunt Winifred,” I said, “I don’t know what it means to be resigned; I don’t know what it _means_!” Still her hand passed softly to and fro across my hair. “To have everything stop all at once! without giving me any time to learn to bear it. Why, you do not know,--it is just as if a great black gate had swung to and barred out the future, and barred out him, and left me all alone in any world that I can ever live in, forever and forever.” “My child,” she said, with emphasis solemn and low upon the words,--“my child, I _do_ know. I think you forget--my husband.”