Gundred was busy with designs for the new stone wing that should arise in place of the treacherous old wooden fire-trap, as soon as the ruins should have been cleared away. Kingston could be moved by nothing except the hope of finding Isabel’s relics. It was not till the third day that his wish was fulfilled. Then, buried in the densest chaos of débris, they found what remained of the dead. Gundred cried bitterly over the tragic discovery, and then, dabbing her eyes, began to meditate an epitaph that should compensate everyone for all that had been suffered. Kingston faced the piteous remains in a stupor. He could not have told what it was that he had expected the excavations to reveal, but surely nothing so crude as this mere wreckage of mortality that came to light. The fire had been merciless: a few fragments of flaky bone, the blackened crust of a skull, from which the white teeth gleamed horribly--this was all that it had left of Isabel. Kingston could never have anticipated the raw ugliness of the revelation. It stunned him anew. This black, bare globe was dreadful, filled with dreadful thoughts and associations, a monstrous burlesque of love and things lovely; its eyeless glare, its obtrusive grin, were ghastly in their mockery of life’s beauties; the glitter of two gold-crowned teeth in the lower jaw set the last fine edge on the horror, in their ironical reminder of the daily life now destroyed for ever. And yet this was Isabel--the real Isabel--or, rather, it was the earthly emblem of her. That rounded shape had actually contained her, had contained the hopes, the fears, the love that had gone to make up Isabel. And now, where and what was Isabel? Only the outward form had suffered; how could the mysterious secret passions that had been the framework of her personality, how could they have any share in the ruin that had fallen on the outward manifestation of Isabel? And yet, without that outward manifestation, how could she still be Isabel? Dimly, fantastically, he tried to figure her in another shape--as another woman, as a man. The task was impossible. To his bounded human outlook, the outward form was an integral part of the real Isabel. Yet, now he was brought face to face with the obvious fact that, while the outward form had been reduced to a thing of loathing and horror, the real Isabel must still be in existence somewhere, incorrupt and incorruptible. It was unthinkable that she should have suffered the fate of her body. So he must perforce bring himself to realize that the thing he loved had had no true connection with the hair, the skin, the features that it had worn for a while. Hair and skin and features were gone; but the beloved remained--out of sight, unrecognisable, remote; yet, for all that, perfect and unalienated. Fire could not touch the heart that was Isabel, the courage, the loyalty, the devotion that were Isabel. They were still alive as ever. But where, in what far world,