“Daddy!” cried Barbara, in pain.  “Didn’t you want me?”

“Want you?” he repeated, in a tone that made the words a caress.  “I wanted you always, and every day I want you more.  I am only trying to say that her love seemed to lessen, instead of growing, as time went on.  If I could know that she died loving me, I would not ask why.  If I could know that she died loving me—­if I were sure she loved me still—­”

“She did, Daddy—­I know she did.”

“If I might only be so sure!  But the ways of the Everlasting are not our ways, and life is made up of waiting.”

Insensibly relieved by speech, his pain gradually merged into quiet acceptance, if not resignation.  “Shall you marry some day, Barbara?” he asked, at last.

“If the right man comes—­otherwise not.”

“Much is written of it in the books, and I know you read a great deal, but some things in the books are not true, and many things that are true are not written.  They say that a man of fifty should not marry a girl of twenty and expect to be happy.  Miriam was fifteen years older than Constance and at first I thought of her, but when your mother came from school, with her blue eyes and golden hair and her pretty, laughing ways, there was but one face in all the world for me.

“We were so happy, Barbara!  The first year seemed less than a month, it passed so quickly.  The books will tell you that the first joy dies.  Perhaps it does, but I do not know, because our marriage lasted only three years.  It may be that, after many years, the heart does not beat faster at the sound of the beloved’s step; that the touch of the loving hand brings no answering clasp.

[Sidenote:  Gift of Marriage]

“But the divinest gift of marriage is this—­the daily, unconscious growing of two souls into one.  Aspirations and ambitions merge, each with the other, and love grows fast to love.  Unselfishness answers to unselfishness, tenderness responds to tenderness, and the highest joy of each is the well-being of the other.  The words of Church and State are only the seal of a predestined compact.  Day by day and year by year the bond becomes closer and dearer, until at last the two are one, and even death is no division.

[Sidenote:  If——­]

“A grave has lain between us for more than twenty years, but I am still her husband—­there has been no change.  And, if she died loving me, she is still mine.  If she died loving me—­if—­she—­died—­loving me——­”

His voice broke at the end, and he went out, murmuring the words to himself.  Barbara watched him from the window as he opened the gate.  Her face was wet with tears.

Flaming banners of sunset streamed from the hills beyond him, but his soul could see no Golden City to-night.  He went up the road that led to another hillside, where, in the long, dreamy shadows, the dwellers in God’s acre lay at peace.  Barbara guessed where he was going and her heart ached for him—­kneeling in prayer and vigil beside a sunken grave, to ask of earth a question to which the answer was lost, in heaven—­or in hell.