When he lifted his head he was alone.  The sheriff was waiting at the house door, Plato stood at a little distance, weeping.  He motioned to him to approach, and in a few words understood that he had with him a companion and a rude bier.  They laid the body upon it, and the sheriff having satisfied himself that the last penalty had been fully paid, Lorimer was permitted to claim his dead.  He took him up to his own room and laid him on his own bed, and passed the night by his side.  The dead opened the eyes of the living, and in that solemn companionship he saw all that he had been blind to for so many years.  Then he understood what it must be to sit in the silent halls of eternal despair, and count over and over the wasted blessings of love and endure the agony of unavailing repentance.

In the morning he knew he must tell Lulu all; and this duty he dreaded.  But in some way the girl already knew the full misery of the tragedy.  Part she had divined, and part she had gathered from the servants’ faces and words.  She was quite aware what was in her uncle’s lonely room.  Just as he was thinking of the hard necessity of going to her, she came to the door.  For the first time in his life he called her “My daughter,” and stooped and kissed her.  He had a letter for her—­David’s dying message of love.  He put it in her hand, and left her alone with the dead.

At sunrise a funeral took place.  In that climate the necessity was an urgent one.  Plato had dug the grave under a tree in the little clearing in the cypress swamp.  It had been a favorite place of resort; there Lulu had often brought her work or book, and passed long happy hours with the slain youth.  She followed his corpse to the grave in a tearless apathy, more pitiful than the most frantic grief.  Lorimer took her on his arm, the servants in long single file, silent and terrified, walked behind them.  The sun was shining, but the chilly wind blew the withered leaves across the still prostrate figure, as it lay upon the ground, where last it had stood in all the beauty and unreasoning passion of youth.

When the last rites were over the servants went wailing home again, their doleful, monotonous chant seeming to fill the whole spaces of air with lamentation.  But neither Lorimer nor Lulu spoke a word.  The girl was white and cold as marble, and absolutely irresponsive to her uncle’s unusual tenderness.  Evidently she had not forgiven him.  And as the winter went wearily on she gradually drew more and more within her own consciousness.  Lorimer seldom saw her.  She was soon very ill, and kept her room entirely.  He sent for eminent physicians, he surrounded her with marks of thoughtful love and care; but quietly, as a flower fades, she died.

One night she sent for him.  “Uncle,” she said, “I am going away very soon, now.  If I have been hard and unjust to you, forgive me.  And I want your promise about my sister’s children; will you give me it?”