Under the aspens it was silent and lonely and sad.  The leaves quivered without any sound of rustling.  Columbine’s heart was full of a happiness that she longed to express somehow, there beside this lonely grave.  It was what she owed the strange man who slept here in the shadows.  Grief abided with her, and always there would be an eternal remorse and regret.  Yet she had loved him.  She had been his, all unconsciously.  His life had been terrible, but it had been great.  As the hours of quiet thinking had multiplied, Columbine had grown in her divination of Wade’s meaning.  His had been the spirit of man lighting the dark places; his had been the ruthless hand against all evil, terrible to destroy.

Her father!  After all, how closely was she linked to the past!  How closely protected, even in the hours of most helpless despair!  Thus she understood him.  Love was the food of life, and hope was its spirituality, and beauty was its reward to the seeing eye.  Wade had lived these great virtues, even while he had earned a tragic name.

“I will live them.  I will have faith and hope and love, for I am his daughter,” she said.  A faint, cool breeze strayed through the aspens, rustling the leaves whisperingly, and the slender columbines, gleaming pale in the twilight, lifted their sweet faces.

THE END