The ground was already being laid out for the garden, and there I stood for some moments thinking what yet might be possible, if all that Bellwattle had said were true. If it should ever be so, we would make that garden together, Clarissa and I, remembering with every seed we sowed, with every flower we tended, that not one moment of Life is to be forgotten—that the whole world, as was that little plot of ground, is a garden of resurrection, where the seeds of promise are ever bringing forth the flowers of remembrance, whose seed again is scattered to the generous earth by the autumn winds.
I made up my mind then that if ever such contentment of Life should come to me, I would make it a hobby to cultivate some new species of sweet pea. Of how these things are done I am as ignorant as the babe unborn. Still, in that moment, I made the determination.
"I will call it Clarissa," said I.
Then every year together we would sow the seeds of it afresh, planting in the mould by their side that little stake of wood, washed white with lime, whereon Clarissa's name should be inscribed. It would serve to help us to remembrance even of death—the remembrance that burial is but the sowing of a seed in God's great garden of resurrection. And then, if ever it came to be my lot to see the small white gravestone on which Clarissa's name should be engraved, I might remember the words of Maeterlinck, "There are no dead," and in the years that followed, myself sow and look forward to the sweet pea in my own small garden and, finding it, achieve some understanding.
"All this shall be," said I, "if what Bellwattle has said is true."
Then at last I opened the door. The kitchen had been turned into a sitting-room. A chair was drawn up to a cheery fire before which, as I entered, some one rose to meet me. I felt my heart beat sick with joy.
It was Clarissa!
Clarissa in her gown of canary-colored satin.
THE END