Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny’s brow.  She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze.  The pain which had filled these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some mysterious ennoblement.  She had been found “worthy to die.”  In the peerage of God’s creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved.  The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny.

But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater than we can bear—­greater than we can bear.  Not Theophil only—­not young love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though sorrow itself should become that dream—­but this poor old mother, all the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up.  Hers is the terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death.

Pity her, Jenny—­speak one word to her.  Hearken to her sobs as she kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart that knows no tears?

Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound of mortal tears?  Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to each and lead them away with you?  They are praying to follow you, only to be with you, wherever you are.

And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child.  Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover could gain.  She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach.

But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that Jenny could not hear them.  He talked to her as though she were a picture of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain.

Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved.  O God! that little tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words of a song, it was marble now.

“Ah!  Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, and no one else in the world?  Jenny, we shall never forget, never forget, shall we?  And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven.  Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say?  Are you glad somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours?  Is it I who seem dead, Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to me, as I am beating at the gates of death?  But, Jenny, we shall find each other, must find each other some day.  I shall be so true, Jenny,—­will you be true to me in heaven?”