"You are right," he said. "I have been living in a dream. It has all vanished. I have kept no memorial of her presence, nothing to perpetuate the most beautiful of lives."
Before I could answer, the door came softly open, and there stood in the doorway a small white figure, holding aloft a lighted taper of pure alabaster. It was Marian in her little night-dress, with the loose, blue wrapper trailing behind her, let go in the effort to hold carefully the doll, Susan Halliday, robed also for the night.
"May I come in?" said the child.
Kenmure was motionless at first, then, looking over his shoulder, said merely, "What?"
"Janet said," continued Marian, in her clear and methodical way, "that my mother was up in heaven, and would help God hear my prayers at any rate; but if I pleased, I could come and say them by you."
A shudder passed over Kenmure; then he turned away, and put his hands over his eyes. She waited for no answer, but, putting down the candlestick, in her wonted careful manner, upon a chair, she began to climb upon the bed, lifting laboriously one little rosy foot, then another, still dragging after her, with great effort, the doll. Nestling at her father's breast, I saw her kneel.
"Once my mother put her arm round me, when I said my prayers." She made this remark, under her breath, less as a suggestion, it seemed, than as the simple statement of a fact.
Instantly I saw Kenmure's arm move, and grasp her with that strong and gentle touch of his that I had so often noticed in the studio,—a touch that seemed quiet as the approach of fate, and as resistless. I knew him well enough to understand that iron adoption.
He drew her toward him, her soft hair was on his breast, she looked fearlessly in his eyes, and I could hear the little prayer proceeding, yet in so low a whisper that I could not catch one word. She was infinitely solemn at such times, the darling; and there was always something in her low, clear tone, through all her prayings and philosophizings, which was strangely like her mother's voice. Sometimes she seemed to stop and ask a question, and at every answer I could see her father's arm tighten, and the iron girdle grow more close.
The moments passed, the voices grew lower yet, the doll slid to the ground. Marian had drifted away upon a vaster ocean than that whose music lulled her from without,—upon that sea whose waves are dreams. The night was wearing on, the lights gleamed from the anchored vessels, the bay rippled serenely against the low sea-wall, the breeze blew gently in. Marian's baby breathing grew deeper and more tranquil; and as all the sorrows of the weary earth might be imagined to exhale themselves in spring through the breath of violets, so it seemed as if it might be with Kenmure's burdened heart. By degrees the strong man's deeper respirations mingled with those of the child, and their two separate beings seemed merged and solved into identity, as they slumbered, breast to breast, beneath the golden and quiet stars. I passed by without awaking them; I knew that the artist had attained his dream.