"Poor boy!" said Mara, "it is too hard upon him. Aunt Roxy, please pick some roses off the bush from under the window and put in the vases; let's have the room as sweet and cheerful as we can. I hope God will let me live long enough to comfort him. It is not so very terrible, if one would only think so, to cross that river. All looks so bright to me now that I have forgotten how sorrow seemed. Poor Moses! he will have a hard struggle, but he will get the victory, too. I am very weak to-night, but to-morrow I shall feel better, and I shall sit up, and perhaps I can paint a little on that flower I was doing for him. We will not have things look sickly or deathly. There, Aunt Roxy, he has come in; I hear his step." "I didn't hear it," said Miss Roxy, surprised at the acute senses which sickness had etherealized to an almost spirit-like intensity. "Shall I call him?" "Yes, do," said Mara. "He can sit with me a little while to-night." The light in the room was a strange dusky mingling of gold and gloom, when Moses stole softly in. The great cloud-castle that a little while since had glowed like living gold from turret and battlement, now dim, changed for the most part to a sombre gray, enlivened with a dull glow of crimson; but there was still a golden light where the sun had sunk into the sea. Moses saw the little thin hand stretched out to him. "Sit down," she said; "it has been such a beautiful sunset. Did you notice it?" He sat down by the bed, leaning his forehead on his hand, but saying nothing. She drew her fingers through his dark hair. "I am so glad to see you," she said. "It is such a comfort to me that you have come; and I hope it will be to you. You know I shall be better to-morrow than I am to-night, and I hope we shall have some pleasant days together yet. We mustn't reject what little we may have, because it cannot be more." "Oh, Mara," said Moses, "I would give my life, if I could take back the past. I have never been worthy of you; never knew your worth; never made you happy. You always lived for me, and I lived for myself. I deserve to lose you, but it is none the less bitter." "Don't say lose. Why must you? I cannot think of losing you. I know I shall not. God has given you to me. You will come to me and be mine at last. I feel sure of it." "You don't know me," said Moses. "Christ does, though," she said; "and He has promised to care for you. Yes, you will live to see many flowers grow out of my grave. You cannot think so now; but it will be so--believe me." "Mara," said Moses, "I never lived through such a day as this. It seems as if every moment of my life had been passing before me, and every moment of yours. I have seen how true and loving in thought and word and deed you have been, and I have been doing nothing but take. You have given love as the skies give rain, and I have drunk it up like the hot dusty earth."