Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/234

222 she appreciated his good-nature. "How can I, then, with this new knowledge of my own, ask you to continue to live with it?"

"I set up my altar, with its multiplied meanings" Stransom began; but she quickly interrupted him:

"You set up your altar, and when I wanted one most I found it magnificently ready. I used it, with the gratitude I've always shown you, for I knew from of old that it was dedicated to Death. I told you, long ago, that my Dead were not many. Yours were, but all you had done for them was none too much for my worship! You had placed a great light for Each—I gathered them together for One!"

"We had simply different intentions," Stransom replied. "That, as you say, I perfectly knew, and I don't see why your intention shouldn't still sustain you."

"That's because you're generous—you can imagine and think. But the spell is broken."

It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it really was, and the prospect stretched gray and void before him. All, however, that he could say was: "I hope you'll try before you give up."

"If I had known you had ever known him, I should have taken for granted he had his candle," she presently rejoined. "What's changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never has had it. That makes my attitude"—she