memory of the past had a new terror for her. She began to feel that these gaps hid something very significant, something which she would sometime remember, and that when she remembered it she would die, her notion of death not being then founded on a definite conception of death derived from any clear recollection of what death was like, but merely an idea that her consciousness might swoon into a state where she would have even less grasp than now on the realities of life. This unremembered memory of the past tortured her. Her brain ached with the secret it had not the strength to reveal. There was a heavy stone somewhere in her head, and she could not push it away from the place where it pressed and pained her. She would wake from sleep crying, and she would not know what she was crying about. She pined with a longing which her mother's caresses only half assuaged. Her intellect roused itself to new activity. She arranged signals of communication with her mother. She would speak and then tell her mother what to do by way of answer. She could not think of many signals, but eager love suggested a few to her mind, two taps on her hand for "yes," one for "no," three for "I don't know."

Christine worried a little as to how her mother fared in the outer world. She remembered that they had been poor, and that she herself had done something to earn money in her earn money in her former life; but she could never remember quite certainly what it was that she had done. Who worked for her mother now? It seemed as if there were washtubs in the kitchen very often, and that she was always running against the ironing board, if she tried to go about the room.

Once she asked, "Mother, have you got money now?" She waited some seconds and felt no gesture of reply, and began to fear with a terrible fear that she had failed to make any sound, when fingers touched hers and some round hard disks dropped into her

hand. She knew them to be coins, and after that she ceased to worry about work or money, taking trustfully whatever happened so far as she perceived its reference to material support, as a little child might take such things. After a while it became a great pleasure to do some household tasks, and one day she found something which waked an old memory in the nerves of her fingers, and in a moment she was knitting and laughing, and her mother was smoothing her hair just where it lay on her forehead.

It was warm weather now and she learned to go alone out into the tiny dooryard. She remembered the yard. better than most places into which she was ever taken. She was familiar with the rose in one corner and the cherry tree in another. Sometimes the sense of loving companionship was so strong that she would get down on the ground and kiss the grass blades. She liked to walk along the path at the end of the yard, keeping her hand on the fence, and she liked to go to the well and lower the bucket and draw it up, and dabble her fingers in the cool water, and feel the dripping she could not hear.

One day, as she sat on the step and felt the sunshine stream down on her head, she thought, "That is God. touching me as mother does," and she was glad. "Why, I used to think about God a great deal," she went on, surprised into one of her flashes of memory. "I won't forget Him again, -it's so nice to think about Him!"

Glad as her heart had been that day in the sunshine and the thought of God, the next time she woke from sleep she was crying. "Mother," she called, "mother, tell me what it is I want! O mother, why can't anybody tell me what makes my heart ache so? It's like a fire burning in me!" She rose sadly, dressed, went and sat idly on the doorstep. "I'm waiting," she murmured, “and it almost seems as if I knew what I'm waiting for. If I did know, perhaps it would not hurt so much."

Suddenly she became aware that steps were approaching on the path, and she sat upright and trembled. The steps ceased, and a terrible moment breathed itself away. Then some one brushed by her with the faintest possible touch upon her person in passing. She sprang to her feet and stumbled over the threshold in wild instinctive pursuit of this presence in the void, this shadow of life, this vanishing thing that could thus touch and thrill and pass her. She ran through the entry, and as soon as she was in the kitchen she knew that other feet than hers were striding up and down the shaking floor. She stretched out her arms, and cried into the throbbing silence, "What is it? What is it? Who is it?"

She felt a man's arms come around her and draw her convulsively to a man's breast. A sharp pain darted through her head, and she remembered! "Paul, Paul!" she cried.

When she was again conscious, she was lying half on the floor and half in his embrace. She reached out her hand, trying to find Paul's face, and her mother's hand took hers and guided it on its eager quest. Lips kissed hers, first her mother's and then his lips.

She was ill after this for an unmeasured time. When she grew strong again, thoughts crowded in upon her, and emotions swept through her. She recognized them as strange, distorted and exaggerated images of thoughts and feelings which she had had in her former life. "I'm the old Christine again," she said, "but there's a difference. No, I'm not changed,—deep in myself; only everything is more so. Didn't the stars ever make you feel as if you were all alone and didn't understand anything? They did me when I could see them. Now everything is like the stars,-far off, and I'm alone, and everything puzzles me. But something always puzzled me."

Paul was with her nearly always. She remembered now that he and she had been engaged, and that he had

gone back to Germany, and that letters had come from him, and he had promised to return and marry her. She talked to him a great deal at first. Her thoughts and moods were like broken arrows of light of light suddenly shooting across the heavy fog that had drifted over her brain. She babbled on, or held her peace, as her heart constrained her, and, without effort to connect or reconcile their contradictions, let her thoughts fall into fragmentary speech, as she told the story of her innocent bewilderment in the sphere in which her spirit moved.

"If I could only hear you speak just once," she sighed. "I can remember your voice, and the mother's, and the church bells,-but I don't remember many other sounds. I merely know I did hear them. I love you, -I love you! Kiss me again, and I shall seem to hear you.-Oh, my God!"

Another time she said, "It is good the stillness doesn't frighten me now, nor the darkness. When I was a little girl, I used to be afraid of the dark silent night. It isn't like that. The worst of it is that it never changes. I wish it would change just a little."

Again she spoke. "Paul, why do you suppose it had to happen to me? I don't remember that I ever did anything so very bad. But I forget so much,-did I ever? Paul,-oh, my poor boy,-what makes you shake so?"

For a brief period thus the impulse to reveal her hidden life, to express her inexpressible experience, drew her on to speech; but when she had several times discovered after speaking that Paul was crying or that her mother's hand was trembling, the desire to speak of these things passed from her. All the more her mind dwelt on the thought that Paul had come for his bride and found her an altered creature. She would sit by him for hours, bending his fingers, feeling of the lines of his face.

She was beside him on the doorstep one day. It was a little chilly

and she shivered. "Paul," she said, "if I am speaking, let me know."

She felt him make the sign for "yes" on her palm, but she waited a long minute before she caught both his hands and turned her face upward.

"Are my eyes very ugly now?" she asked. "Are there scars since I was sick?"

She dropped one of his hands, but she clutched the fingers of the other tight as she held out her free hand for the answer and panted during the second of delay before the answer came, a tap on her palm for "no."

She breathed with a shudder. "It isn't really any matter," she said, "but I'm glad if I'm not ugly." She was aware that the quiet about her was invading her soul like an enemy, and she said, "Paul, you came to marry me?"

The sign for "yes" came in immediate response. She bent her head, fumbled with her lips, laid them on his wrist and moved them up his arm and kissed his sleeve. Then she spoke again. "You can't marry me now," she said. "It would be like marrying a stone. I couldn't keep your house." His arms closed around her, but she pulled herself away and extended her hand for the answer. "You can't marry me now," she repeated; then in a moment she cried, "Where are you, Paul? Have you gone away?"

She felt her mother bend over her from behind and, turning, she flung herself against her mother's knees and dropped her head lower and yet lower till it rested on her mother's feet. She was conscious that Paul was grasping her shoulders with a passionate and tender touch, but, seizing her mother's gown, she raised herself away from him and asked, "Can he marry

me now?"

It was her mother's fingers that made upon her hand the sign for "no."

There came a moment, when she felt Paul's kiss upon her mouth, and

in some mysterious way her soul knew that the kiss meant good-by. After he was gone, she found that God and her mother were left. The darkness was full of them,-especially of God. His was the Real Presence. She strove to do her little household tasks as formerly. She kept no count of time, but she knew that the seasons passed, and she knew when the days were long and when they were short, not only by noticing the weather, but by means of a little homely device. Her mother always brought her the lamp to touch the moment she lighted it. Christine knew it was brought as soon as lighted because the glass had not become hot when she touched it, and so she learned that evening-time had begun.

The docility of her nature gradually spiritualized itself into peacefulness. Moreover, her mind, when it was no longer stimulated by Paul's presence, sank into something like its dreamy lethargy before he had come back. At last there came a morning when she was startled to find that her mother did not get up from her bed, and that her cheek was cold. She ran out into the yard, throwing her arms about and screaming, till people took hold of her and led her back into the house. She had one girl friend, Greta, who was almost the only person except her mother and Paul who had seemed familiar to her since her sickness. To this girl she clung in the days immediately following that awful moment in which she had realized the meaning of the coldness of her mother's cheek. She dimly understood the significance of the things she was directed to do during this time. When she perceived that Greta was trying to induce her to put on a woollen gown and a hat and jacket, she recalled a funeral which she had attended long before. When she was placed in a chair and Greta sat motionless at her side and held her hand for it seemed to her ages and ages, she became convinced that the funeral services for her mother were occurring. She was taken out of

doors and helped into something which she guessed to be a carriage. "Now we're going to the grave," she thought.

In these days she had seldom spoken, but now she began to ask questions, and Greta tapped the Greta tapped the answers as her mother had done. "Have we left the graveyard?" she asked. "Where shall you take me now? Oh, you can't answer that! Will you take me to my own home? No? Will you take me to yours? Yes? I am glad of that."

She slept that night with Greta. In the morning, she reached over and patted Greta till she felt her stir. "Greta," she said, "Greta, I am scared. Tell me something. Do you know where Paul is? Mother didn't know this long time." The tap on her hand was for "no"; and she turned her face away and spoke no more for many hours.

One day she was dressed again in her woollen gown, and Greta led her into the street. As they walked, a strange person sometimes touched her. She wondered where they were going and who was with them. The sunshine fell full on her face, and the old thought came back, "It's God trying to love me." She felt glad for the first time since she knew that her mother was dead, and she laughed. Greta's arms came with trembling force about her, and Greta's lips kissed hers.

"It's funny to kiss me in the street, Greta," she said, "and your cheeks. are wet. Are you crying? It troubles me to have you cry."

She was led at last up some steps, and over bare floors, and up stairs again, and over other floors, till it was indicated to her that she was to sit down. Greta's hands took off her hat and jacket. She was frightened now and, springing to her feet, she caught hold of Greta's shoulders and cried. "Where am I? What are you going to do with me?"

Then she was drawn into Greta's lap and held there until all the sob

bing trembling of her body ceased. After a while Greta led her to a bed, and made her feel all over it. It was long and narrow. She walked to the upper end of it and found a table standing there. She touched the things on it and recognized them as her own, her pincushion, her basket of knitting, her box of thread and buttons, her comb and brush, the picture of her mother in a little frame,—she knew them all. Overcome with the sense of strangeness, she sank on to the floor and felt Greta go down with her. Some one else lifted her and laid her on the bed. Greta kissed her again and again.

After that, it was as if the earth had opened and swallowed up her past life. For a long time she kept expecting to feel Greta's kiss again; but she never did. The hands that came into contact with her were all strange to her. She did not know where she was. She asked questions. She cried out again and again, "Tap my hand, twice for yes, and once for no,-shall I ever see Greta again?" But no taps came in response to her effort to teach the unseen, unheard persons moving around her to communicate with her. At first she feared lest she had lost the power to make articulate sounds any more. But in spite of this fear, she had all the time an opposing conviction that her vocal organs were really acting as perfectly as ever; and after a while she noticed that, although no intelligent answer ever came to what she said, some kindly hand was frequently laid gently on her after she had spoken, and at last she decided that she was still able to make sounds, but that no one in this place where she had been left understood German. She tried in vain to think of English words; she could remember none. It was like losing another sense to find her ability to speak a useless power. Her soul shrank still deeper in its fleshly covering. She began to realize that she should never again know where in this world she was, or who was with her. Her mind trod on

shadows and grew uncertain in its steps.

Somebody helped her to go to bed and to get up again. For long periods of time, this was always the same somebody, and Christine guessed that the person was in some sort a caretaker. Different women led her regularly a crooked way through doorways to a large table, where she always found food. There were smells of cooking and heat as from a stove in this room. The persons who guided her were often very feeble in their

movements.

Occasionally she wondered if anybody would come for her if there should be a fire in her mysterious abode. She called it "this Place," in her thoughts. She found it hard to keep from imagining "this Place" full of unseen flames, circling around, approaching, seizing upon her body. "It's too cool here, it's too cool here," she would say to reassure herself.

She had been there past several sleeping times before she ventured to walk alone in the room. Going about at last, groping her way, she found many little beds and tables placed like her own. Feeling as she went, she touched a face on a pillow; and the face was cold as her mother's had been that dreadful morning when her broken life had fallen to pieces. She dropped on the floor and crouched. there trembling, until some person helped her to rise and took her back to her own chair. She felt this person all over in a vain attempt to distract her mind from the thought of the cold face upon the pillow. The person so examined stood motionless while she moved her fingers in nervous search. It was a small feminine creature, but it did not seem like a child, though its size was that of a child. It had hair done up in a knot on the back of its head, and that head was very long and narrow, small and ill shaped. Its teeth protruded. Its hands were like claws. Its gown reached to the floor. Christine felt a horrible curiosity to know just what sort of a being it was

that stood before her. She turned the unresisting figure around, and got down on the floor and felt of the little feet she found there. They were deformed things. To touch them gave her a shock. She started away and got up into her chair and folded her hands tightly in her lap. She did not dare to stir, lest she should again. come into contact with the poor little dreadful body that somehow frightened her. She kept imagining that the creature was still near her; but after a long time she fearfully moved her hands out from her own person, and fell to sobbing with thankfulness just because she touched nothing.

The next morning she sprang up suddenly from her cot, thinking desperately, "God must take me out of this horrible place." Stepping impulsively forward, she came to the cot next her own, and nearly fell over it. Two hands met her as she stumbled forward, and helped her to recover her footing. They patted her arms and pulled her down to soft, trembling lips, that kissed her mouth. She groped with her fingers and her heart in them, and she found an old woman lying on the bed. She knew it was an old woman, because the sweet, kissing mouth was toothless and the cheeks were wrinkled, and the soft, comforting hands were wrinkled too. There was a ruffled cap on the head, and the feeling of the frills gave Christine a queer delight. The girl sat on the bedside in loving companionship for a happy half hour. "It's almost like having mother again," thought she.

She was sorry when some one came to lead her away; but her first impulse was always that of obedience to any intimation of a will outside her own personality, and she submitted. She greatly marvelled because her hat and jacket were brought her. Were they going to take her to Greta? The hope sent the blood to her heart, when she found herself led out of doors. She was kept walking for many minutes, and the fresh air and the odor of flow