Aunt Winifred has said something about going, but I cannot yet bear to hear of such a thing. She is to stay a while longer. 16th. We have been over to-night to the grave. She proposed to go by herself, thinking, I saw, with the delicacy with which she always thinks, that I would rather not be there with another. Nor should I, nor could I, with any other than this woman. It is strange. I wished to go there with her. I had a vague, unreasoning feeling that she would take away some of the bitterness of it, as she has taken the bitterness of much else. It is looking very pleasant there now. The turf has grown fine and smooth. The low arbor-vitæ hedge and knots of Norway spruce, that father planted long ago for mother, drop cool, green shadows that stir with the wind. My English ivy has crept about and about the cross. Roy used to say that he should fancy a cross to mark the spot where he might lie; I think he would like this pure, unveined marble. May-flowers cover the grave now, and steal out among the clover-leaves with a flush like sunrise. By and by there will be roses, and, in August, August’s own white lilies. We went silently over, and sat silently down on the grass, the field-path stretching away to the little church behind us, and beyond, in front, the slope, the flats, the river, the hills cut in purple distance melting far into the east. The air was thick with perfume. Golden bees hung giddily over the blush in the grass. In the low branches that swept the grave a little bird had built her nest. Aunt Winifred did not speak to me for a time, nor watch my face. Presently she laid her hand upon my lap, and I put mine into it. “It is very pleasant here,” she said then, in her very pleasant voice. “I meant that it should be,” I answered, trying not to let her see my lips quiver. “At least it must not look neglected. I don’t suppose it makes any difference to _him_.” “I do not feel sure of that.” “What do you mean?” “I do not feel sure that anything he has left makes no ‘difference’ to him.” “But I don’t understand. He is in heaven. He would be too happy to care for anything that is going on in this woful world.” “Perhaps that is so,” she said, smiling a sweet contradiction to her words, “but I don’t believe it.” “What do you believe?” “Many things that I have to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” “I have sometimes wondered, for I cannot help it,” I said, “whether he is shut off from all knowledge of me for all these years till I can go to him. It will be a great while. It seems hard. Roy would want to know something, if it were only a little, about me.” “I believe that he wants to know, and that he knows, Mary; though, since the belief must rest on analogy and conjecture, you need not accept it as demonstrated mathematics,” she answered, with another smile. “Roy never forgot me here!” I said, not meaning to sob.