It was the first time Edna had mentioned his name since her return, and it brought a faint flush to her cheeks.

“That was a childish whim which she has utterly forgotten.  A woman of her temperament never remains attached to a man from whom she is long separated.  I do not suppose that she remembered St. Elmo a month after she ceased to meet him.  I feel assured that she loves Gordon as well as she can love any one.  She is a remarkably sweet-tempered, unselfish, gladsome woman, but is not capable of very deep, lasting feeling.”

“I will go away at once.  This is Saturday, and I will start to New York early Monday morning.  Mr. Leigh is weaker than I ever imagined he could be.”

The outline of her mouth hardened, and into her eyes crept an expression of scorn, that very rarely found a harbor there.

“Yes, my dear; although it grieves me to part with you, I know it is best that you should not be here, at least for the present.  Agnes is visiting friends at the North and when she returns, Gordon and Gertrude will remove to their new house.  Then, Edna, if I feel that I need you, if I write for you, will you not come back to me?  Dear child, I want your face to be the last I look upon in this world.”

She drew the pastor’s shrunken hand to her lips, and shook her head.

“Do not ask me to do that which my strength will not permit.  There are many reasons why I ought not to come here again; and, moreover, my work calls me hence, to a distant field.  My physical strength seems to be ebbing fast, and my vines are not all purple with mellow fruit.  Some clusters, thank God! are fragrant, ripe, and ready for the wine-press, when the Angel of the Vintage comes to gather them in; but my work is only half done.  Not until my fingers clasp white flowers under a pall, shall it be said of me, ’Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.’  In coelo quies!  The German idea of death is to me peculiarly comforting and touching, ’Heimgang’—­going home.  Ah, sir! humanity ought to be homesick; and in thinking of that mansion beyond the star-paved pathway of the sky, whither Jesus has gone to prepare our places, we children of earth should, like the Swiss, never lose our home-sickness.  Our bodies are of the dust—­dusty, and bend dustward; but our souls floated down from the sardonyx walls of the Everlasting City, and brought with them a yearning maladie du pays, which should help them to struggle back.  Sometimes I am tempted to believe that the joys of this world are the true lotos, devouring which, mankind glory in exile, and forget the Heimgang.  Oh! indeed, ’here we have no continuing city, but seek one to come.’  Heimgang!  Thank God! going home for ever!”

The splendor of the large eyes seemed almost unearthly as she looked out over the fields, where in summers past the shout of the merry reapers rose like the songs of Greek harvesters to Demeter!  Nay, nay, as a hymn of gratitude and praise to Him who “feedeth the fowls of the air,” and maketh the universe a vast Sarepta, in which the cruse never faileth the prophets of God.  Edna sat silent for some time, with her slender hands folded on her lap, and the pastor heard her softly repeating, as if to her own soul, those lines on “Life”: