Year: 1874

will wait for you, Ray, all my life il
need be- she closed it again hastily
she could not bear to re call all that


might have been hers and never
could be now she thought, with q


sud den passionate yearning fol
death, that she was barely twenty,
and that life-tne's waiting might


be u very long one she looked


shudderingly along the whole blank


stretch of years, with no love to


shorten them.


But there was latent strength


in Sylvia's sottness that forbade her


to lie down and die.


The first intolerable anguish over,


she took up her cross again and


faced the weary road, neither with


defiance nor despair, but with that


quiet patience which grows with the


bnrden.


Withal, it was, doubtless, well


for her that other cares came to oc-
cupy her. Colonel Darchcster's
pension ceased with his death and


he could leave his daughter little


besides the tiny house, with its strip
of garden that had been his special
care. Sylvia could not live on roses
and dew ; she must bestir herself to
satisfy the unsympathetic body,
which will not resign one of it's pro-
sale wants, however the soul may
hunger and faint. Fortunately in
her case, the wants were of the sim
plest, and provided for without
much difficulty.


So two more years slipped by.
Sylvia was twenty-five, girl still,
yet as far removed from all girlish
things as if a score had been added
to her age. Not that she had grown
old, for, ifthe bloom of girlhood was
gone, it's freshness and softness re-
manned. And indeed, she had
gained more than she had lost, for
the lovely soul revealed itself most
clearly through the transparent
covering, and replaced prettin ess
with beauty. No. she had not
grown old, but she had grown es
tranged; in the world, but not of
it, she lived in a wonderful land all
her own, not quite past nor future,
but the might e.been, trans
formed into an unreal yet most real
present.


In all this time no tidings of Ray.
Dead, or alive, he had passed utter.
ly out of the world that had know
him. The pictures he had turned
to the wall with such reluctant haste
gathered dust undisturbed, and the
colors faded gradually out of the
canves, Just as his image faded out
of the memory of all-save one.
That one forgot neither the artist
nor his creations. 1t was so she
loved best to think of him, only
successfully, famous, crowned with
the laurels she tondly believed his
right. She could nevey pass the
place where he had worked with
out a moments pause and a wistful
glance upward, as if she might still
see his face at the window, or
his shadow thrown across the light
ed curtain. And standing so once.
as if her yearnings had the over
to bring up ghost out of the long
buried past, she heard voise speak
her name-s'Sylvia !!


Rays voice! Sylvia stood mo-
tionless, with dropping eyes for an
instant, not to lose the sweet cheat :;
then turned slowly, half expecting
to see nothing but empty air. But
there was form beside her-Ray's
form, his face, his very self, undis.
guised to her by the changes of
four years. 1t was suddenly as. if
she had only waited for this moment
through all that time; she never
doubted nor questioned; she only
laid her hands in his, and looking
up in his eyes, spoke the word



But, after the first moment, a
kind of restraint seemed to fall on
both. lviarecognized that the Ray
who had come back was not quite
the same Ray who had gone away.
There was certain hardness about
him, reserve most unlike his former
self. The old Ray would have poured
out questions and explanations in a
breath this one neither asked nor
offered any. He told her, indeed,
regarding his mysterious disap-
that he had been carried
off by vesse. lying on the coast,
but nothing g beyond, not a word of
his life in all that time since then.