of Hamlet, that, while the prince gazes on the spirit of his father, noting every expression and gesture—­even his dress, as he passes through his late wife’s chamber, Gertrude, less unfaithful as widow than as wife, not only sees nothing, but by no sigh or hint, no sense in the air, no beat of her own heart, no creep even of her own flesh, divines his presence—­is not only certain that she sees nothing, but that she sees all there is.  She is the dead, not her husband.  To the dead all are dead.  The eternal life makes manifest both life and death.”

“Please, Mr. Polwarth,” said Juliet, “remember it is the middle of the night.  No doubt it is just the suitable time, but I would rather not make one in an orgy of horrors.  We have all to be alone presently.”

She hated to hear about death, and the grandest of words, Eternal Life, which to most means nothing but prolonged existence, meant to her just death.  If she had stolen a magic spell for avoiding it, she could not have shrunk more from any reference to the one thing commonest and most inevitable.  Often as she tried to imagine the reflection of her own death in the mind of her Paul, the mere mention of the ugly thing seemed to her ill-mannered, almost indecent.

“The Lord is awake all night,” said Polwarth, rising, “and therefore the night is holy as the day.—­Ruth, we should be rather frightened to walk home under that awful sky, if we thought the Lord was not with us.”

“The night is fine enough,” said Juliet.

“Yes,” said Ruth, replying to her uncle, not to Juliet; “but even if He were asleep—­you remember how He slept once, and yet reproached His disciples with their fear and doubt.”

“I do; but in the little faith with which He reproached them, He referred, not to Himself, but to His Father.  Whether He slept or waked it was all one:  the Son may sleep, for the Father never sleeps.”

They stood beside each other, taking their leave:  what little objects they were, opposite the two graceful ladies, who also stood beside each other, pleasant to look upon.  Sorrow and suffering, lack and weakness, though plain to see upon them both, had not yet greatly dimmed their beauty.  The faces of the dwarfs, on the other hand, were marked and lined with suffering; but the suffering was dominated by peace and strength.  There was no sorrow there, little lack, no weakness or fear, and a great hope.  They never spent any time in pitying themselves; the trouble that alone ever clouded their sky, was the suffering of others.  Even for this they had comfort—­their constant ready help consoled both the sufferer and themselves.

“Will you come and see me, if you die first, uncle?” said Ruth, as they walked home together in the moonlight.  “You will think how lonely I am without you.”