“Yes,” she gasped, with a great effort, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.

A hot tear fell on the doctor’s hand, and he felt as if his own heart was weeping with his beloved, anxious wife.

He knew that this thought had often poisoned her life and, full of tender sympathy, turned her beautiful face towards him and pressed a long kiss on her closed eyes, then said, tenderly: 

“You are mine, I am yours, and if there is a life beyond the grave, and an eternal justice, the dumb will speak as they desire, and sing wondrous songs with the angels; the sorrowful will again be happy there.  We will hope, we will both hope!  Do you remember how I read Dante aloud to you, and tried to explain his divine creation, as we sat on the bench by the fig-tree.  The sea roared below us, and our hearts swelled higher than its storm-lashed waves.  How soft was the air, how bright the sunshine!  This earth seemed doubly beautiful to you and me as, led by the hand of the divine seer and singer, we descended shuddering to the nether world.  There the good and noble men of ancient times walked in a flowery meadow, and among them the poet beheld in solitary grandeur—­do you still remember how the passage runs?  ’E solo in parte vidi ‘l Saladino.’  Among them he also saw the Moslem Saladin, the conqueror of the Christians.  If any one possessed the key of the mysteries of the other world, Elizabeth, it was Dante.  He assigned a lofty place to the pagan, who was a true man—­a man with a pure mind, a zeal for goodness and right, and I think I shall have a place there too.  Courage, Elizabeth, courage!”

A beautiful smile had illumined the wife’s features, while she was reminded of the happiest hours of her life, but when he paused, gazed into her eyes, and clasped her right hand in his, she was seized with an intense longing to pray once, only once, with him to the Saviour so, drawing her fingers from his, she pressed the image of the Crucified One to her breast with her left hand, pleading with mute motions of her lips, inteligible to him alone, and with ardent entreaty in her large, tearful eyes:  “Pray, pray with me, pray to the saviour.”

Lopez was greatly agitated; his heart beat faster, and a strong impulse urged him to start up, cry “no,” and not allow himself to be moved, by an affectionate meakness, into bowing his manly soul before one, who, to him, was no more than human.

The noble figure of the crucified Saviour, carved by an artist’s hand in ivory, hung from an ebony cross, and he thrust the image back, intending to turn proudly way, he gazed at the face and found there only pain, quiet endurance, and touching sorrow.  Ah, his own heart had often bled, as the pure brow of this poor, persecuted, tortured saint bled beneath its crown of thorns.  To defy this silent companion in suffering, was no manly deed—­to pay homage, out of love, to Him, who had brought love into the world, seemed to possess a sweet, ensnaring charm—­so he clasped his slender hands closely round his dumb wife’s fingers, pressed his dark curls gainst Elizabeth’s fair hair, and both, for the first and last time, repeated together a mute, fervent prayer.