"Nothing—not even death. She seems close to me now, as I sit looking at you."
Impulsively Margaret threw her arms around her mother's friend. "Oh, you bring her closer to me than she has ever been in all my life. Tell me about her."
They sat long together, the older woman living over for the girl the life of the mother she had never known,—her girlhood, the marriage, the brief wedded life, and its untimely close.
"I love to hear you tell about it," Margaret said, a tender light in her eyes. "I have known so little of my mother. Somehow father never talked with me much about her. I think it hurt him to remember."
"He was very fond of her," Mrs. Pennybacker said, "and she of him. I never knew a purer love match, nor a happier married life."
"And yet she had to give it up so soon. Oh, Mrs. Pennybacker, it seems to me the saddest thing to want to live and have to die! I don't think anything could be harder than that."
"Yes. There is something harder than that, Margaret. It is to want to die and have to live."
Margaret's face expressed incredulity.
Her head was thrown back with a gesture that was habitual with her, and her eyes shining.
"You are very happy, Margaret?" said Mrs. Pennybacker, softly.