It is an awful moment when first Death looks in at the door. The positive recognition of his presence is so different from any vividest imagination of it! For the moment I believed nothing,--felt only the coming blackness of absolute loss. I cared neither for my children, nor for my father or mother. Nothing appeared of any worth more. I had conscience enough left to try to pray, but no prayer would rise from the frozen depths of my spirit. I could only move about in mechanical and hopeless ministration to one whom it seemed of no use to go on loving any more; for what was nature but a soulless machine, the constant clank of whose motion sounded only, "Dust to dust; dust to dust," forevermore? But I was roused from this horror-stricken mood by a look from my husband, who, catching a glimpse of my despair, motioned me to him with a smile as of sunshine upon snow, and whispered in my ear,-- "I'm afraid you haven't much more faith than myself, after all, Wynnie." It stung me into life,--not for the sake of my professions, not even for the honor of our heavenly Father, but by waking in me the awful thought of my beloved passing through the shadow of death with no one beside him to help or comfort him, in absolute loneliness and uncertainty. The thought was unendurable. For a moment I wished he might die suddenly, and so escape the vacuous despair of a conscious lingering betwixt life and the something or the nothing beyond it. "But I cannot go with you!" I cried; and, forgetting all my duty as a nurse, I wept in agony. "Perhaps another will, my Wynnie,--one who knows the way," he whispered; for he could not speak aloud, and closed his eyes. It was as if an arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart. If _he_ believed, _I_ could believe also; if _he_ could encounter the vague dark, _I_ could endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had to be done. At length a faint hope began to glimmer in the depths of my cavernous fear. It was long ere it swelled into confidence; but, although I was then in somewhat feeble health, my strength never gave way. For a whole week I did not once undress, and for weeks I was half-awake all the time I slept. The softest whisper would rouse me thoroughly; and it was only when Marion took my place that I could sleep at all.