There for an instant or two he lay, breathing feebly; and the girl heard a faint whisper again—­“Not a tear—­not a tear!” He opened his eyes once more and gazed at her dimly, and then a slight trembling shook his frame.  His chest heaved once more and sank, and after it everything was still.

For an instant Helen stared at him, dazed; then she clutched him by the shoulders, whispering hoarsely-then calling louder and louder in frenzied terror, “David, David!” He gave no answer, and with a cry that was fearful to hear the girl clutched him to her.  The body was limp and lifeless—­the head fell forward as if the neck were broken; and Helen staggered backward with a scream.

There came an instant of fierce agony then; she stood in the center of the room, reeling and swaying, clutching her head in her hands, her face upturned and tortured.  And first she gasped, “He is dead!” and then “I shall not ever see him again!” And she choked and swallowed a lump in her throat, whispering in awful terror, “Not a tear—­not a tear!” And then she flung up her arms and sank forward with an incoherent cry, and fell senseless into Arthur’s arms.

A week had passed since David’s death; and Helen was in her father’s home once more, sitting by the window in the gathering twilight.  She was yery pale, and her eyes were sunken and hollow; but the beauty of her face was still there, tho in a strange and terrible way.  Her hand was resting upon Arthur’s, and she was gazing into his eyes and speaking in a deep, solemn voice.

“It will not ever leave me, Arthur, I know it will not ever leave me; it is like a fearful vision that haunts me night and day, a voice that cries out in my soul and will not let me rest; and I know I shall never again be able to live like other people, never be free from its madness.  For oh, I do not think it is often that a human soul sees what I saw—­he seemed to drag me out into the land of death with him, into the very dwelling-place of God.  And I almost went with him, Arthur, almost!  Can you dream what I suffered—­have you any idea of what it means to a human being to make such an effort?  I loved that man as if he had been my own soul; I was bound to him so that he was all my life, and to have him go was like tearing my heart in two; and he had told me that I should never see him again, that there was nothing to look for beyond death.  And yet, Arthur, I won—­do you ever realize it?—­I won.  It seemed to me as if the earth were reeling about me—­as if the very air I breathed were fire; and oh, I thought that he was dead—­that he was gone from me forever, and I believed that I was going mad!  And then, Arthur, those awful words of his came ringing through my mind, ’Not a tear, not a tear!’ I had no faith, I could see nothing but that the world was black with horror; and yet I heard those words!  It was love—­it was even fear, I think, that held me to it; I had worshiped his sacredness, I had given all my soul to the wonder of his soul;