We suffer differently indeed, but we suffer equally.  The death of his sweetheart forces one man to reflect anew on the slightness of life’s pleasures and the depth of life’s griefs.  In the peaceful valley of natural instincts and affections he had slept for a while, now he awoke on one of the high peaks lit with the rays of intense consciousness, and he cried aloud, and withdrew in terror at a too vivid realisation of self.  The other man wept for the daughter that had gone out of his life, wept for her pretty face and cheerful laughter, wept for her love, wept for the years he would live without her.  We know which sorrow is the manliest, which appeals to our sympathy, but who can measure the depth of John Norton’s suffering?  It was as vast as the night, cold as the stream of moonlit sea.

He did not arrive home till late, and having told his mother what had happened, he instantly retired to his room.  Dreams followed him.  The hills were in his dreams.  There were enemies there; he was often pursued by savages, and he often saw Kitty captured; nor could he ever evade their wandering vigilance and release her.  Again and again he awoke, and remembered that she was dead.

Next morning John and Mrs Norton drove to the rectory, and without asking for Mr Hare, they went up to her room.  The windows were open, and Annie and Mary Austin sat by the bedside watching.  The blood had been washed out of the beautiful hair, and she lay very white and fair amid the roses her friends had brought her.  She lay as she had lain in one of her terrible dreams—­quite still, the slender body covered by a sheet, moulding it with sculptured delight and love.  From the feet the linen curved and marked the inflections of the knees; there were long flowing folds, low-lying like the wash of retiring water; the rounded shoulders, the neck, the calm and bloodless face, the little nose, and the beautiful drawing of the nostrils, the extraordinary waxen pallor, the eyelids laid like rose leaves upon the eyes that death has closed for ever.  Within the arm, in the pale hand extended, a great Eucharis lily had been laid, its carved blossoms bloomed in unchanging stillness, and the whole scene was like a sad dream in the whitest marble.

Candles were burning, and the soft smell of wax mixed with the perfume of the roses.  For there were roses everywhere—­great snowy bouquets, and long lines of scattered blossoms, and single roses there and here, and petals fallen and falling were as tears shed for the beautiful dead, and the white flowerage vied with the pallor and the immaculate stillness of the dead.

The calm chastity, the lonely loveliness, so sweetly removed from taint of passion, struck John with all the emotion of art.  He reproached himself for having dreamed of her rather as a wife than as a sister, and then all art and all conscience went down as a broken wreck in the wild washing sea of deep human love:  he knelt by her bedside, and sobbed piteously, a man whose life is broken.