Her long silence had incited me to question, and she turned her face to me, and slowly said,—
"By the Lightning of Life.
"Two sisters, in one night,—one unto Death, the other unto Life. Beside Doctor Percival was standing one. I do not know what he was like, I cannot tell you; but, believe me, it is solemnly true, that, that instant, this human being flashed into my heart and soul. I saw, and felt, and have heard the rolling thunder that followed the flash to this very hour. It was very hard, over my Alice. If I had only been she, how much, how much happier it would have been!—and yet it must have been wiser. She could not have endured to the end. She would have failed in the bitterness of the trial.
"My Alice! I am devoutly thankful that you are safe in heaven!"—and for a moment the hands were lifted up from the treasured packet; they closed over it, and she went on.
"Alice was wrapped up in earth. In the moment when the first fold of the clod-mantle, that trails about us all at the last, fell protectingly over her, I was in that condition of superlative misery that cries out for something to the very welkin that sends down such harsh hardness; and I hurried my eyes out of the open grave, only to find them again arrested by the same soul that had stood beside Doctor Percival and Alice in her death. They said something to me, kinder than ever came out of the blue vault, and yet they awoke the fever of resistance. I would have no thought but that of Alice. What right had any other to come in then and there?
"September came. Its days brought my sorrow to me ever anew. The early dew baptized it; the great sun laid his hot hand upon its brow and named it Death, in the name of the Mighty God; and the evening stars looked down on me, rocking Alice in my soul, and singing lamentful lullabies to her, sleeping, till such time as Lethean vapors curled through the horizon of my mind, and hid its formless shadows of suffering.
"Mary Percival was Alice's best friend; as such, she came to comfort and to mourn with me. One day, it was the latest of September's thirty, Mary lured me on to the sea-shore, and into her small boat once more. Little echoes of gladness sprang up from the sea; voices from Alice's silence floated on the unbroken waves.
"'You look a little like yourself again; I'm so glad to see it!' Mary said. 'There comes Mr. McKey. I wonder what brings him here.'
"I looked up, and saw, slowly walking on to the point at which Mary was securing her boat, the possessor of the existence that had come into mine. There was no way for me to flee, except seaward; and of two suicides I chose the pleasanter, and I stayed.
"'Who is it, Mary?' I had time to question, and she to answer.