It was so late when we started home that the streets were deserted. The only noise was the hollow sound our own footsteps made on the board walk. Even that ceased the last half of the way, for we crossed over and went along the beach, walking close to the curling edges of the tide. Several times we paused to stand and look at the path the moon made on the water—wide miles of rippling silver, like a highway for the feet of passing angels.

I kept thinking of Aunt Elspeth as I looked. It took away my sadness to feel that she must have passed up that radiant road. And everything—the white night itself—seemed throbbing with the words, "But Love abides! Death cannot take that."

I think Richard heard them too, for once as we stood looking back he said, "Somehow that belief of Uncle Darcy's changes one's conception of death, just as that moon changes the night and the sea. It takes all the blackness out. It gives ... Dad ... back to me again. It makes me feel differently about saying goodbye to you all."

"I wish you didn't have to say goodbye," I exclaimed impetuously. "I wish that this awful war were over and you could stay right on here."

"Without my having done my part to win it?" he asked in a reproachful sort of tone.

"You've done your part," I told him. "And a big one. And I want you to know before you go away what we think about it. Barby wrote to Miss Crewes all about what you did up in Canada, and said, 'I am telling you this in order that you may have another Sir Gareth to add to your list of knightly souls who do their deed and ask no guerdon.' Ever since then we've thought of you, as Sir Gareth."

Even in the moonlight I could see that he was embarrassed. He protested that we were giving him more credit than he deserved. Then to make light of the affair he went on about how he hadn't begun to do his part. He couldn't feel it was done till he'd bombed at least one Hun. "A hundred Huns" was his slogan, and the number he'd set for himself to get.

We started to walk on again. I was making some teasing remark about his being a bloodthirsty creature, when I stepped on the end of a broken oar. It turned with me and almost tripped me up. He put out a steadying hand, then slipped my arm through his to help me along.

"I know you're tired," he said as we walked on. "You had to rush through all that sewing this morning, and there was the excitement of the wedding and tonight—the waiting. It's been a hard day for you."

His voice sounded almost as sympathetic and comforting as Uncle Darcy's. Away out across the dunes some belated home-goer began whistling. Clear and sweet the notes came dropping through the still night, as if blown from a far-off silver flute:

Instinctively we both turned to look at that shining path on the water, as if that were the trail, and stood listening till the last whistled note died away. Then suddenly Richard put his hand over mine as it lay on his arm, and held it close. After that there didn't seem to be any need of words. Somehow his very silence seemed to be saying something to me. I could feel it thrilling through me as one violin string thrills to the vibration of another.

I know now, after the experience of that night, that I shall never be able to write the leading novel of the century, as I have long hoped to do. I shall never attempt one of any kind now, even a little mediocre one. And the reason is this:

The greatest thing in the story of any life is that moment of miracle when love enters in and transfigures it. It is impossible to describe the coming of Dawn on a mountain-top so that another really feels the glory of it. If he has witnessed it himself anything one could say seems inadequate and commonplace. If he has never experienced such a revelation, all the words in the dictionary couldn't help him to see it.

If I were to put down here the few words Richard said as he was leaving me at the door, they might seem incoherent and ordinary to anyone else, but uttered with his arms around me, the touch of his lips on mine—how could one put into any story the sacredness of such an experience? The wonder of it, the rapture of it? And even if you did partially succeed, there would always be people like Tippy, for instance, to purse up their lips at the attempt, as if to say, "Sentimental!" So I shall never try.

When Tippy, in her bathrobe and with a candle, came down the dark hall to fumble at the door and let me in, I didn't say a word. I couldn't. I just walked past her, so awed by the throbbing happiness that filled me that I couldn't think of anything else, and not for worlds would I have had her know. If it had been Barby I would have thrown my arms around her and whispered, "Oh, Barby! I'm so happy!" and she would have held me close and understood. But I felt that Tippy would say, "Tut, you're too young to be thinking of such things yet." She has shamed me that way, making me feel that she considered me a sentimental silly young thing, several times in the past.

"Well?" she said questioningly, when I did not speak. Her waiting attitude reminded me that she was expecting me to tell her something. Then I remembered—about Aunt Elspeth—and I was conscience-smitten to think I had forgotten her entirely. It seemed ages since we had left Fishburn Court, with the sadness of her death the uppermost thing in our mind, but in reality it hadn't been more than a half an hour. But it had been long enough for the beginning of "a new heaven and a new earth" for me.

My voice trembled so that I could hardly speak the words—"She's gone." Then I saw that Tippy attributed my agitation to grief. She questioned me for details, but there was little to tell. When we left no arrangements had been made for the funeral.

"How did Uncle Darcy take it?" she asked as we reached the top of the stairs. I told her, repeating his own words. My voice shook again, but this time it was because I was remembering the stricken old figure on the doorstep, pathetic loneliness in every line of it, despite the brave words with which he tried to comfort himself. A tear started to roll down Tippy's cheek. She made a dab at it with the sleeve of her bathrobe.

"Poor old soul!" she exclaimed. "Their devotion to each other was beautiful. Over sixty years they've been all in all to each other. Pity they both couldn't have been taken at the same time."

A wonder came over me which I have often felt before. Why is it that people like Tippy, who show such tenderness for a love-story when it is flowing to its end in old age, are so unsympathetic with it at its beginning. What is there about it at the source that Youth cannot understand or should not talk about?

At my door she waited till I struck a match and lighted my lamp. I wondered why she held up her candle and gave me such a keen glance as she said goodnight. When she closed the door behind her and I walked over to the dressing-table, I was suddenly confronted by the reason. The face that looked out at me from the mirror was not the face of one who has just looked on a great sorrow. I was startled by my own reflection. It had a sort of shining, exalted look. I wondered what she could have thought.

I hurried with my undressing so that I could put out the lamp and swing open the casement window that looks down on the sea. The air came cool and salt against my hot cheeks. The silver radiance that flooded the harbor streamed in across me as I knelt down with my elbows on the sill and my hands folded to pray.

Presently I realized with a guilty start that I wasn't following my usual petitions. I had prayed only for Richard, and then, gazing down on the beach where we stood such a short time ago, I re-lived that moment and the ones that followed. The memory was as sacred as any prayer. It was not for its intrusion that my conscience smote me, but it seemed wickedly selfish to be forgetting those whom I had knelt purposely to remember: Father and Barby, all those in peril on the sea, all the victims of war and the brave souls everywhere, fighting for the peace of the world. And dear old Uncle Darcy—in the very first hour of his terrible loneliness—how could I forget to ask comfort for him?

Stretching out my arms to that shining space above the water I whispered, "Dear God, is it right for me to be so happy with such awful heartache in the world?"

But no answer came to me out of that wonderful glory. All I seemed to hear was Uncle Darcy's quavering words—"But love abides! Death cannot take that!"

And presently as I kept on kneeling there I knew that was the answer: "Love that beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" is God-given. Heartache and Death may touch every life for a time, but Love abides through the ages.