Again came a long pause.  Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had become quiet again.  When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely audible.

“That cannot be.  I know what you mean, but it cannot be....  He died on the eve of his wedding.  For my bridal clothes they made me black garments instead.  It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white, but—­” her hands made a gesture.  Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow and copse early of a midsummer’s morning.  “Therefore,” she resumed, “your heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was.”

But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy’s voice.

“With my eyes—­these eyes,” she repeated, pointing to them.

Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles.  “None except I have seen it.  It is not to be seen,” she said.

The gipsy sat suddenly erect.

“It is not so.  Keep still in your chair,” she ordered, “and I will tell you when—­”

It was a curious thing that followed.  As if all the will went out of her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and dropped.  The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her knees.  Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of smiles stole over Aunt Rachel’s cheeks.  Once more her head dropped.  Her hands moved.  Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with felt the chair began to rock.  Annabel lifted one hand.

“Dovo se li” she said.  “It is there.”

Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her.  With that ineffable smile still on her face, she rocked....

Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....

“Jal—­it is gone,” said the gipsy woman.

Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again.  She repeated dully after Annabel: 

“It is gone.”

“Ghosts,” the gipsy whispered presently, “are of the dead.  Therefore it must have lived.”

But again Aunt Rachel shook her head.  “It never lived.”

“You were young, and beautiful?...”

Still the shake of the head.  “He died on the eve of his wedding.  They took my white garments away and gave me black ones.  How then could it have lived?”

“Without the kiss, no....  But sometimes a woman will lie through her life, and at the graveside still will lie....  Tell me the truth.”

But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated:  “He died on the eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments....”  From her lips a lie could hardly issue.  The gipsy’s face became grave....

She broke another long silence.