"Yes, I know. You can't grasp it or fathom it. You can only project your love into it and be quite sure that it finds a hold on the other side. Why, my dear girl, that's what love is for. It's the connecting link that God Himself is bound to recognize because it is of His own forging. Don't you see--don't you know it is Divine? That is why our love can hold so strongly--even through Death. Just because it is part of His plan--a link in the everlasting Chain that draws the whole world up to Paradise at last. It's so divinely simple. One wonders how anyone can miss the meaning of it." Olga's rapt face relaxed. She smiled at him--a very loving, comprehending smile. "Yes, I see it when you put it like that, Nick, of course. It is only just at first Death seems so staggering--such a plunge into the dark." "But there is nothing in the dark to frighten us," Nick said. "If some of us died and some didn't, it would be terrible, I grant. But we are all going sooner or later. No one is left behind for long. To my mind there's a vast deal of comfort in that. It doesn't leave much time for grousing when we simply can't help moving on." She squeezed his hand. "I wonder where I'd be without you, Nick." Nick's grin flashed magically across his face. "I'm only a man, kiddie," he observed, "and I seem to have been gassing somewhat immoderately. However, them's my sentiments, and you can take 'em or leave 'em according to fancy." Thereafter for a space they talked of Violet, touching no tragic note, recalling her as an absent friend. Olga dwelt fondly upon the thought of her, scarcely realizing her loss. The new life she had entered had done much to soften the blow when it should fall. Here in a strange land she did not feel her friend's death as she would inevitably have felt it at Weir. Circumstances combined with Nick's sheltering presence to lift the weight which otherwise must have pressed heavily upon her. Moreover, the longer she contemplated the matter, the more completely did she realize that it had not come to her with the force of a sudden calamity. Deep within her she had carried a nameless dread that had hung upon her like an iron fetter. She had longed--yet trembled--to know the truth. Now that burden seemed lifted from her, and she was conscious of relief. Before, she had feared she knew not what; but now she feared no longer. She was weary beyond measure, too weary for grief or wonder, though she did ask Nick, faintly smiling, why they had kept the truth from her for so long. "I should have found it easier if I had known," she said. But Nick shook his head with the wisdom of an old man. "You weren't strong enough to know," he said. She did not contest the point, reflecting that Nick, with all his shrewdness, was but a man, as he himself admitted.