The pinioned girl tried to throw back her head and bring their eyes together, but Anna, through some unconscious advantage, held it to her shoulder, her own face looking out over the garden.

"Ah, let me be glad for you, Flora, let me be glad for you! Oh, think of it! You have him! have him at home, to look upon, to touch, to call by name! and to be looked upon by him and touched and called by name! Oh, God in heaven! God in heaven!"

Miranda's fond protests were too timorous to check her, and Flora's ceased in the delight of hearing that last wail confess the thought of Hilary. Constance strove with tender energy for place and voice: "Nan, dearie, Nan! But listen to Flora, Nan. See, Nan, I haven't opened Steve's letter yet. Wounded and what, Flora, something worse? Ah, if worse you couldn't have left him."

"I know," sighed Anna, relaxing her arms to a caress and turning her gaze to Flora. "I see. Your brother, our dear Charlie, has come back to life, but wounded and alone. Alone. Hilary is still missing. Isn't that it? That's all, isn't it?"

Constance, in a sudden thought of what her letters might tell, began to open one, though with her eyes at every alternate moment on Flora as eagerly as Miranda's or Anna's. Flora stood hiddenly revelling in that complexity of her own spirit which enabled her to pour upon her questioner a look, even a real sentiment, of ravishing pity, while nevertheless in the depths of her being she thrilled and burned and danced and sang with joy for the very misery she thus compassionated. By a designed motion she showed her grandmother's reticule on her arm. But only Anna saw it; Constance, with her gaze in the letter, was drawing Miranda aside while both bent their heads over a clause in it which had got blurred, and looked at each other aghast as they made it out to read, "'--from the burial squad.'" The grandmother's silken bag saved them from Anna's notice.

"Oh, Flora!" said Anna again, "is there really something worse?" Abruptly, she spread a hand under the bag and with her eyes still in the eyes of its possessor slid it gently from the yielding wrist. Dropping her fingers into it she brought forth a tobacco-pouch, of her own embroidering, and from it, while the reticule fell unheeded to the floor, drew two or three small things which she laid on it in her doubled hands and regarded with a smile. Vacantly the smile increased as she raised it to Flora, then waned while she looked once more on the relics, and grew again as she began to handle them. Her slow voice took the tone of a child alone at play.

"Why, that's my photograph," she said. "And this--this is his watch--watch and chain." She dangled them. A light frown came and went between her smiles.

With soft eagerness Flora called Constance, and the sister and Miranda stood dumb.

"See, Connie," the words went on, "see, 'Randa, this is my own photograph, and this is his own watch and chain. I must go and put them away--with my old gems." Constance would have followed her as she moved but she waved a limp forbiddal, prattling on: "This doesn't mean he's dead, you know. Oh, not at all! It means just the contrary! Why, I saw him alive last night, in a dream, and I can't believe anything else, and I won't! No, no, not yet!" At that word she made a misstep and as she started sharply to recover it the things she carried fell breaking and jingling at her feet.

"Oh-h!" she sighed in childish surprise and feebly dropped to her knees. Flora, closest by, sprang crouching to the rescue, but recoiled as the kneeling girl leaned hoveringly over the mementos and with distended eyes and an arm thrust forward cried aloud, "No! No! No-o!"

At once, however, her voice was tende............