“December third.

“At last I have come to perfect peace.  I no longer hunger so terribly for the touch of her, for my aching arms to clasp her close, for her lips to quiver beneath mine.  The tide has ebbed—­there is no more pain.

“I have come, strangely, into kinship with the universe.  I have a feeling to-night of brotherhood.  I can see that death is no division when a heart is deep enough to hold a grave.  The Grey Angel cannot separate her from me, though she took the white poppies from his hands, and gave none to me.

“December eighteenth.

[Sidenote:  Day by Day]

“Constance, Beloved, I feel you near to-night.  The wild snows of Winter have blown across your grave, but your love is warm and sweet around my heart.  The sorrow is all gone and in its place has come a peace as deep and calm as the sea.  I can wait, day by day, until the Grey Angel summons me to join you; until the poppies that stilled your heartbeats, shall, in another way, quiet mine, too.

“I can have faith.  I can believe that somewhere beyond the star-filled spaces, when this arc of mortal life merges into the perfect circle of eternity, there will be no barrier between you and me, because, if God is love, love must be God, and He has no limitations.

“I can take up my burden and go on until the road divides, and the Grey Angel leads me down your path.  I can be kind.  I can try, each day, to put joy into the world that so sorely needs it, and to take nothing away from whatever it holds of happiness now.  I can be strong because I have known you, I can have courage because you were brave, I can be true because you were true, I can be tender because I love you.

“At last I understand.  It is passion that cries out for continual assurance, for fresh sacrifices, for new proof.  Love needs nothing but itself; it asks for nothing but to give itself; it denies nothing, neither barriers nor the grave.  Love can wait until life comes to its end, and trust to eternity, because it is of God.”

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  A Man’s Heart]

Roger put the little book down and wiped his eyes.  He had come upon a man’s heart laid bare and was thrilled to the depths by the revelation.  He was as one who stands in a holy place, with uncovered head, in the hush that follows prayer.

In the midst of his tenderness for his dead father welled up a passionate loyalty toward the woman who slept in the room adjoining the library, whose soul had “never been welded.”  She had known life no more than a prattling brook in a meadow may know the sea.  Bound in shallows, she knew nothing of the unutterable vastness in which deep answered unto deep; tide and tempest and blue surges were fraught with no meaning for her.

The clock struck twelve and Roger still sat there, with his head resting upon his hand.  He read once more his father’s wish to bequeath to him his love, “with no barrier to divide it from its desire.”