Chapter 15

Her voice throbbed warmly upon that last, and during the pause the light it had brought still played upon her face. “We were talking in class about immortality,” she went on, more slowly. “There's one form of immortality I like to think about. It's that all those who from the very first have given anything to the world are living in the world to-day.” There was a rush of tears to her eyes and of affection to her voice as she finished, very low: “You'll never die. You've deepened the consciousness of life too much for that.”

They sat there as twilight drew near to night, the old man and the young girl, silent. The laughter of boys and girls and the good-night calls of the birds were all around them. The fragrance of life was around them. It was one of those silences to which come impressions, faiths, longings, not yet born as thoughts.

Something in the quality of that silence brought the rescuing sense of its having been good to have lived and done one's part--that sense which, from places of desolation and over ways rough and steep and dark, can find its way to the meadows of serenity.

THE END