They passed through the burning streets, past squads of drunken soldiers, and at last found the little group gazing sadly at the sick woman. “How is Bessie?” Helen asked. “She—is—dead.” “And the child?” “It is unborn.” The gleam of the burning houses lit up her pale face and tinged the brown locks with gold. Helen knelt and kissed the lips cold in death, and “Old Secesh” turned away with a groan. CHAPTER XLVII There are those who think that they have seen the face of her whom men call Tragedy. They see an old man, and his quivering lips are still whispering the name of her whom they used to touch so passionately. In his trembling hand is a letter, faded, brown, tear-stained. He reads and reads, though he might have thrown it away thirty years ago, and not a word would have been lost, so deeply are they cut in his heart. “Look!” say they, “he is praying still for her return,” and the colonel would start in fright, so sure would he be that they had seen him. “Surely,” say they, “this is Tragedy.” It is not. It is her cousin, Hope. They see a woman, and she, too, is waiting, but the man stands by her side. Each of her myriad dreams used to fly to him; now they cannot; they are dead. They are dead, and so is he—the man she loved—tho’ many years after she is buried, his pulse will be strong and his step elastic. A catafalque, gilded, perhaps, but within a dead thing lies—a human heart, and it is her husband! It used to beat for her joyfully in the days when she needed it sorely, but, oh, not so sorely as now! It will never thrill for her again. Then these wise men look up and say: “Love has died, and yet his body remains unburied. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not. It is but an older sister. They follow the tracks of one who has fled far back into the blackest cavern of the darkest woods, fled with a little babe in her arms, fled to hide her shame. Its father is not there, though he swore never so faithlessly to be a loyal lover, and then a loving husband to her who holds the little one in her arms, kissing it, and then despising it, and then kissing it again and again. She loves this child of shame while he—he breaks the vows which once he intended to keep. Then the wise men turn and say: “Truth is dead and will not live until God awakes and asks Lucifer who defiled this lily of His own garden in the pool of his passion. Is not this Tragedy?” It is not, but it is her shadow. She is near now. Come and see her form.