The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate or dread, but almost love.  Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of youth, the murderer of Jenny,—­Death had robbed him of his life’s one treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening for his step, like a lover.

Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the explanation was very simple.  Theophil loved death because Jenny had died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he would have loved life had Jenny gone on living.  By dying Jenny had made death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many allusions to Jenny.

Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears listlessly of Peru.  But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny’s sake.  Besides, some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news to tell him of the dark land.  One would walk far, would listen late for such precious tidings.

Did such tidings ever come?  Yes, some had even seen their loved ones again, shining strangely on the air.  Why did Jenny never come like that?  How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, had ever come.  Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in the deaf and dumb language of the dead.  Perhaps it was they who led us to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of hope we never dreamed had come from them.  Or might it not happen that the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:—­

     “Is death’s long kiss a richer kiss
       Than mine was wont to be,
     Or have you gone to some far bliss
       And straight forgotten me?”

Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of faithfulness might some day be a burden to her...

This love of death was no mere morbid absorption.  It was but one of the activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had become “dear as the temple’s self,” and his jealousy for those honours paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the signs of human faithfulness.

Not all unrewarded was that watch.  The world held some faithful hearts,—­let us not ask how many,—­lovers of invisible faces and voices heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of remembrance.