all wrung Mercy’s heart.  It was her first experience of being alone.  She had often pictured to herself, or rather she thought she had, what it would be; but no human imagination can ever sound the depths of that word:  only the heart can feel it.  It is a marvel that hearts do not break under it oftener than they do.  The silence which is like that darkness which could be felt; the sudden awakening in the night with a wonder what it means that the loved one is not there; the pitiless morning light which fills the empty house, room after room; and harder than all else to forget, to rise above—­the perpetual sense of no future:  even the little near futures of the next hour, the next day, all cut off, all closed, to the human being left utterly alone.  The mockery of the instincts of hunger and need of rest seems cruel.  What a useless routine, for one left alone, to be fed, to sleep, and to rise up to eat and sleep again!

Mercy bore all this in a sort of dumb bewilderment for a few days.  All Stephen’s love and sympathy did not help her.  He was unutterably tender and sympathizing now that poor old Mrs. Carr was fairly out of his way.  It surprised even himself to see what a sort of respectful affection he felt for her in her grave.  Any misgiving that this new quiet and undisturbed possession of Mercy might not continue did not cross his mind; and when Mercy said to him suddenly, one evening about ten days after her mother’s death, “Stephen, I must go away, I can’t live in this house another week,” it was almost as sudden a shock to him as if he had gone in and found her dead.

“Go away!  Leave me!” he gasped, rather than said.  “Mercy, you can’t mean it!” and the distress in his face smote Mercy bitterly.  But she persisted.  “Yes, I do mean it,” she said.  “You must not ask me to stay.  I should lose my senses or fall ill.  You can’t think how terrible it is to me to be all alone in these rooms.  Perhaps in new rooms I should not feel it so much.  I have always looked forward to being left alone at some time, and have thought I would still have my home; but I did not think it could feel like this.  I simply cannot bear it,—­at any rate, not till I am stronger.  And besides, Stephen,” and Mercy’s face flushed red, “there is another thing you have not thought of:  it would never do for me to live here alone in this house with you, as we have been living.  You couldn’t come to see me so much now mother is not here.”

Poor Mrs. Carr! avenged at last, by Stephen’s own heart.  How gladly would he have called her to life now!  Mercy’s words carried instantaneous conviction to his mind.  It was strange he had never thought of this before; but he had not.  He groaned aloud.

“O Mercy!  O Mercy!” he exclaimed, “I never once thought of that, we have been living so so long.  You are right:  you cannot stay here.  Oh, what shall I do without you, my darling, my darling?”

“I do not think you can ever be so lonely as I,” said Mercy; “for you have still your work left you to do.  If I had any human being to need me, I could bear being separated from you.”