“I love Memory tonight,” she said: “I prize her as my best friend. She is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my heart, in warm and beautiful life, realities⁠—not mere empty ideas, but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed, dissolved, mixed in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours, the thoughts, the hopes of my youth. I renew the love of my life⁠—its only love⁠—almost its only affection; for I am not a particularly good woman: I am not amiable. Yet I have had my feelings, strong and concentrated; and these feelings had their object; which, in its single self, was dear to me, as to the majority of men and women, are all the unnumbered points on which they dissipate their regard. While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed! What a glorious year I can recall⁠—how bright it comes back to me! What a living spring⁠—what a warm, glad summer⁠—what soft moonlight, silvering the autumn evenings⁠—what strength of hope under the icebound waters and frost-hoar fields of that year’s winter! Through that year my heart lived with Frank’s heart. O my noble Frank⁠—my faithful Frank⁠—my good

Frank! so much better than myself⁠—his standard in all things so much higher! This I can now see and say: if few women have suffered as I did in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his love. It was a far better kind of love than common; I had no doubts about it or him: it was such a love as honoured, protected, and elevated, no less than it gladdened her to whom it was given. Let me now ask, just at this moment, when my mind is so strangely clear⁠—let me reflect why it was taken from me? For what crime was I condemned, after twelve months of bliss, to undergo thirty years of sorrow?

“I do not know,” she continued after a pause: “I cannot⁠— cannot see the reason; yet at this hour I can say with sincerity, what I never tried to say before, Inscrutable God, Thy will be done! And at this moment I can believe that death will restore me to Frank. I never believed it till now.”

“He is dead, then?” I inquired in a low voice.