'Oh, Olive, how strange it seems, to think you have come back to us again, when Mildred thought you had gone!' ejaculated Ethel, in a tone almost of awe.
'Yes,' returned Olive, simply; 'I know what death means now. When I come to die, I shall feel I know it all before.'
'But you did not die, dear Olive!' exclaimed Ethel, in a startled voice. 'No one can know but Lazarus and the widow's son; and they have told us nothing.'
'Aunt Milly says they were not allowed to tell; she thinks there is something awful in their silence; but all the same I shall always feel that I know what dying means.'
Ethel looked at her with a new reverence in her eyes. Was this the stammering, awkward Olive?
'Tell me what you mean,' she whispered gently; 'I cannot understand. One must die before one can solve the mystery.'
'And was I not dying?' returned Olive, in the same dreamy tone. 'When I close my eyes I can bring it all back; the faintness, the dizziness, the great circles of light, the deadly, shuddering cold creeping over my limbs, every one weeping round me, and yet beyond a great silence and darkness; we begin to understand what silence means then.'
'A great writer once spoke of "voices at the other end of silence,"' returned Ethel, in a stifled tone. This strange talk attracted and yet oppressed her.
'But silence itself—what is silence?—one sometimes stops to think about it, and then its grandeur seems to crush one. What if silence be the voice of God!'
'Dear Livy, you must not excite yourself,' interrupted Richard; but his tone was awestruck too.