But, when she eagerly stretched out her arms
and cried, "Take me now," he disappeared, and she found the song stayed upon her lips, the room hushed, and only the glory, which the angel's presence had shed about, still lingered there. The holy stillness came into her heart also, and she sat quietly upon the floor a long time; and when, at last, she rose and went up to her aunt's bedside, she found the brow she kissed was cold, the hand she clasped was chilly; and, in looking with fear upon the aunt's face, she found the dews of death resting there.
The aunt was dead! Those songs, which flowed so easily from Cybele's lips, had become the requiem of the dead, and those soft tones had been the last sigh of a passing soul.
Cybele knew that when the angel had over-shadowed her, as she sang, he had borne hence her aunt's spirit.
But, O, it was so hard to be left all alone! And when the people from the other room came in and prepared her aunt for the burial; when they took her from the bed and put her in the rude coffin, the child's heart felt like breaking, and, had it not been for the words the angel had spoken to her
when he came to bear hence the dear aunt, she would have wept without ever smiling again.
Then they carried away the coffin into a dismal place, where was neither green grass nor pleasant brook, nor even a flower, might it be ever so little; and there was a row of square, black doors against the walls, one of which they opened, and shoved the coffin into a dark place.
O, it was so dreary a place, with the high fence all about it, and the cold, dismal, gray clouds above! It did not seem to Cybele that she could leave the aunt there. Could she only lie away in the beautiful land where the mother slept, where the birds rested their wings upon the lemon-trees, and the blue sky smiled in quiet peacefulness!
But the people who stood around could not understand her grief, and so they hurried her from the yard and locked up the gate.
That night Cybele lay alone upon the bed on which her aunt had died, and the lonely grief came so fast upon her that she could not sleep, and the morning found her weary and heart-broken.