As yet, Anthony Dexter’s body lay in his own room.  Ralph led Miss Evelina in, and closed the door.  “Here he is,” sobbed the boy.  “He has gone and left the shame for me.  Forgive him, Miss Evelina!  For the love of God, forgive him!”

Evelina sighed.  She was standing close to Anthony Dexter now without fear.  She had no wish to torture him, as she once had, with the sight of her unveiled face.  It was the man she had loved, now—­the emotion which had made him hideous to her was past and gone.  To her, as to him the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the supreme answer to all perplexing questions.

Ralph crept out of the room and closed the door so softly that she did not hear.  She was alone, as every woman some day is; alone with her dead.

She threw back her veil.  The morning sun lay strong upon Anthony Dexter’s face, revealing every line.  Death had been kind to him at last, had closed the tortured eyes, blotted out the lines of cruelty around his mouth, and changed the mask-like expression to a tender calm.

A hint of the old, loving smile was there; once again he was the man she had loved, but the love itself had burned out of her heart long ago.  He was naught to her, nor she to him.

The door knob turned, and, quickly, she lowered her veil.  Piper Tom came in, with a soft, slow step.  He did not seem to see Miss Evelina; one would have said he did not know she was in the room.  He went straight to Anthony Dexter, and laid his warm hand upon the cold one.

“Man,” he said, “I’ve come to say I forgive you for hurting Laddie.  I’m not thinking, now, that you would have done it if you had known.  I’m sorry for you because you could do it.  I’ve forgiven you as I hope God will forgive you for that and for everything else.”

Then he turned to Evelina, and whispered, as though to keep the dead from hearing:  “’T was hard, but I’ve done it.  ’T is easier, I’m thinking, to forgive the dead than the living.”  He went out again, as silently as he had come, and closed the door.

Was it, in truth, easier to forgive the dead?  In her inmost soul, Evelina knew that she could not have cherished lifelong resentment against any other person in the world.  To those we love most, we are invariably most cruel, but she did not love him now.  The man she had loved was no more than a stranger—­and from a stranger can come no intentional wrong.

“O God,” prayed Evelina, for the first time, “help me to forgive!”

She threw back her veil once more.  They were face to face at last, with only a prayer between.  His mute helplessness pleaded with her and Ralph’s despairing cry rang in her ears.  The estranging mists cleared, and, in truth, she put self aside.

Intuitively, she saw how he had suffered since the night he came to her to make it right, if he could.  He must have suffered, unless he were more than human.  “Dear God,” she prayed, again, “oh, help me forgive!”