doubt as to the manner in which his argument for the immortality of past
selves might impress Miss Ludington. A mild melancholy such as hers
sometimes becomes sweet by long indulgence. She might not welcome
opinions which revolutionized the fixed ideas of her life, even though
they should promise a more cheerful philosophy. If she did not accept his
belief, but found it chimerical and visionary, the effect of its
announcement upon her mind could only be unpleasantly disturbing. It was,
therefore, not without some anxiety that he approached the house.

But his first glimpse of her, as she stood in the door awaiting him,
dissipated his apprehensions. She wore a smiling face, and the deep black
in which she always dressed was set off, for the first time since his
knowledge of her, with a bit or two of bright colour.

She said not a word, but, taking him by the hand, led him into the
sitting-room.

That morning she had sent into Brooklyn for immortelles, and had spent
the day in festooning them about Ida's picture, so that now the sweet
girlish face seemed smiling upon them out of a veritable bower of the
white flowers of immortality.

In the days that followed, Miss Ludington seemed a changed woman, such
blitheness did the new faith she had found bring into her life. The
conviction that the past was deathless, and her bright girlhood immortal,
took all the melancholy out of retrospection. Nay, more than that, it
turned retrospection into anticipation. She no longer viewed her
youth-time through the pensive haze of memory, but the rosy mist of hope.
She should see it again, for was it not safe with God? Her pains to guard
the memory of the beautiful past, to preserve it from the second death of