“Nevermore! Ah, nevermore!
Till we touch the heavenly shore,
Voice or smile of hers shall bless
Our heart-bleeding loneliness.
Jesus, King, and Brother mild!
Keep her yet a little child,
That her face we there may see
As we yield it back to thee!”
The parents and the child’s brother sobbed as they bent over the unanswering dead, if the peaceful brightness of that flower-like face could be called unresponsive, and they rose only when some of their nearer friends bent over and would have lifted them. Then the bearers took up the bier and passed out of the sun, and disappeared into what from the outside seemed a profound darkness.
It was a long corridor formed precisely like a catacomb, except that the greater part of it was masonry. The roof, floor, and walls were all of unpolished gray stone with white marble tablets set in the walled-up niches. Three iron lamps suspended from the ceiling threw all about a tender golden light. At the farthest end of the corridor something white reflected dimly. There were a few closed niches, but the greater number of them were unoccupied. Outside one of these, opposite the second lamp, a smaller lamp, as yet unlighted, was set in an iron ring fixed in the masonry.