It had been evident that the young wife was drooping; it had been increasingly evident since the birth of her child. Always frail and delicate, marriage, it seemed, had never with her, as with some fragile constitutions, stayed the tendency to decline, but had rather confirmed and increased it. Something was gone from her, indeed, which no vital force of love could replace. She seemed to fade where she stood, like a spent lily. As the months drew on she grew weaker and still weaker. Her husband saw, but without understanding. It was a transient indisposition in his eyes. Autocrats are incredulous of death. One night at the opera she fainted. Some moment in it had stabbed her with a too-poignant memory. There was consternation then; but she rallied--yet never to the ground she had lost, and was still steadily yielding. She grew to be the shadow of herself; yet not so much the shadow as the phantasm. Her beauty did not go, nor her young symmetry; only it was strangely refined, as if some light within shone through dissolving walls. And yet she was never but gentle and lovely-sweet with all; very patient, uncomplaining, but always without merriment or laughter. And so one day there dawned upon her the third anniversary of her lover’s death. On that day she would not look upon her basil. For a week past she had put it aside where her eyes could not encounter it. There had been signs, which yet the wild longing in her heart could not find courage to verify. Now she dared not put them to the test; she dared not risk the ruin of her hopes until the last possible moment of endurance. It came with the dying day. In the last lingering hour of light she hurried towards the spot. Something greeted her even in the instant of her approach--something like a sweet hand held out. She gasped; she gave one little cry of rapture so intense that God in His high place must have wept to hear it. The little bush was mealed over with fragrant flowers as thick as snow.