Alexander; but since your mother left me, children, since then—­my arms are no weaker than they were; but in here—­what it was that shriveled, broke, leaked away—­I can not find words for it.  If you care for me—­and I know you do—­you must not be vexed with me if my gall rises now and then; there is too much bitterness in my soul.  I can not reach the goal I strive after and was meant to win; I have lost what I loved best, and where am I to find comfort or compensation?”

His children tenderly assured him of their affection, and he allowed Melissa to kiss him, and stroked Alexander’s hair.

Then he inquired for Philip, his eldest son and his favorite; and on learning that he, the only person who, as he believed, could understand him, would not come to see him this day above all others, he again broke out in wrath, abusing the degeneracy of the age and the ingratitude of the young.

“Is it a visit which detains him again?” he inquired, and when Alexander thought not, he exclaimed contemptuously:  “Then it is some war of words at the Museum.  And for such poor stuff as that a son can forget his duty to his father and mother!”

“But you, too, used to enjoy these conflicts of intellect,” his daughter humbly remarked; but the old man broke in: 

“Only because they help a miserable world to forget the torments of existence, and the hideous certainty of having been born only to die some horrible death.  But what can you know of this?”

“By my mother’s death-bed,” replied the girl, “we, too, had a glimpse into the terrible mystery.”  And Alexander gravely added, “And since we last met, father, I may certainly account myself as one of the initiated.”

“You have painted a dead body?” asked his father.

“Yes, father,” replied the lad with a deep breath.  “I warned you,” said Heron, in a tone of superior experience.

And then, as Melissa rearranged the folds of his blue robe, he said he should go for a walk.  He sighed as he spoke, and his children knew whither he would go.  It was to the grave to which Melissa had accompanied him that morning; and he would visit it alone, to meditate undisturbed on the wife he had lost.

CHAPTER II.

The brother and sister were left together.  Melissa sighed deeply; but her brother went up to her, laid his arm round her shoulder, and said:  “Poor child! you have indeed a hard time of it.  Eighteen years old, and as pretty as you are, to be kept locked up as if in prison!  No one would envy you, even if your fellow-captive and keeper were younger and less gloomy than your father is!  But we know what it all means.  His grief eats into his soul, and it does him as much good to storm and scold, as it does us to laugh.”

“If only the world could know how kind his heart really is!” said the girl.