The realization bent her slender figure under a load of self-reproach and self-mistrust.  She drooped lower and lower above the sad, dead face until she slid to the ground beside him.  Heavy tearless sobs shook her slight frame as it stretched its length beside the dead love and the dead dream.  The ideal so long treasured in her soul had lost its reality.  The present had wiped out the past as a sponge wipes off a slate.

If she had but heeded his warning, and refrained from coming until later, she would have escaped making a stranger of him forever.  Now the sad, aged face, the dead, strange face which she had seen but five minutes before, had completely obscured in her memory the long-loved, young face that had been with her all these years.  The spirit whose consoling presence she had thought to feel upholding her at this moment made no sign.  She was alone in the world, bereft of her one supporting ideal, alone beside the dead body of one who was a stranger alike to her sight and her emotions; alone at night in an isolation as unexpected as it was terrible to her, and which chilled her senses as if it had come to oppress her forever.

The shadows which she had not noticed before, the dark corners of the tomb, the motionless gleam of the moon as it fell through the open door, and laid silently on the floor like light stretched dead, the low rustle of the wind as if Nature restlessly moved in her sleep, came suddenly upon her, and brought her—­fear.  She held her breath as she stilled her sobs to realize that she alone lived in this city of the Dead.  The chill of fright crept along the surface of her body, which still vibrated with her storm of grief.

She seemed paralyzed.  She dared not move.

Every sense rallied to her ears in dread.

Suddenly she heard her name breathed:  “Margaret!”

It was whispered in a voice once so familiar to her ears, a voice that used to say, “Madge.”

She raised herself on her elbow.

She dared not answer.

She hardly dared breathe.

She was afraid in every sense, and yet she hungered for another sound of that loved voice.  Every hour of its banishment was regretted at that moment.  There seemed no future without it.

Every nerve listened.

At first she heard nothing but the restless moving of the air, which merely emphasized her loneliness, then she caught the pulsation of slow regular breathing.

She started to her feet.

She snatched up the lantern and quickly mounted to the bier.  She looked sharply down into the dead face.

Silent, with its white hair, and worn lines, it rested on its white pillows.

No sound came from the cold still lips.

Yet, while her eyes were riveted on them, once more the longed-for voice breathed her name.  “Margaret!”

It came from behind her.

She turned quickly.

There in the moonlit doorway, with a sad, compassionate smile on his strong, young face—­as if it were yesterday they had parted—­stood the man she remembered so well.