It is Easter again. As of old, the joyous bells clang out the glad news
of the resurrection. The giddy, dancing sunbeams laugh riotously in
field and street; birds carol their sweet twitterings everywhere, and
the heavy perfume of flowers scents the golden atmosphere with inspiring
fragrance. One long, golden sunbeam steals silently into the
white-curtained window of a quiet room, and lay athwart a sleeping face.
Cold, pale, still, its fair, young face pressed against the satin-lined
casket. Slender, white fingers, idle now, they that had never known
rest; locked softly over a bunch of violets; violets and tube-roses in
her soft, brown hair, violets in the bosom of her long, white gown;
violets and tube-roses and orange-blossoms banked everywhere, until the
air was filled with the ascending souls of the human flowers. Some
whispered that a broken heart had ceased to flutter in that still, young
form, and that it was a mercy for the soul to ascend on the slender
sunbeam. To-day she kneels at the throne of heaven, where one year ago
she had communed at an earthly altar.


III.

Far away in a distant city, a man, carelessly looking among some
papers, turned over a faded bunch of flowers tied with a blue ribbon
and a lock of hair. He paused meditatively awhile, then turning to the
regal-looking woman lounging before the fire, he asked:

"Wife, did you ever send me these?"

She raised her great, black eyes to his with a gesture of ineffable
disdain, and replied languidly: