With his heart full of this new fondness and warmth, Stephen went at an early hour to seek Mercy.  As he entered the house, he was sensibly affected by the expression still lingering of the yesterday’s grief.  The decorations of evergreens and flowers were still untouched.  Mercy and Lizzy had made the whole house gay as for a festival; but the very blossoms seemed to-day to say that it had been a festival of sorrow.  A large sheaf of callas had stood on a small table at the head of the coffin.  The table had not yet been moved from the place where it stood near the centre of the room; but it stood there now alone, with a strange expression of being left by accident.  Stephen bent over it, looking into the deep creamy cups, and thinking dreamily that Mercy’s nature was as fair, as white, as royal as these most royal of graceful flowers, when the door opened and Mercy came towards him.  He sprang to meet her with outstretched arms.  Something in her look made the outstretched arms fall nerveless; made his springing step pause suddenly; made the very words die away on his lips.  “O Mercy!” was all he could say, and he breathed it rather than said it.

Mercy smiled a very piteous smile, and said, “Yes, Stephen, I am here.”

“O Mercy, it is not you!  You are not here.  What has done this to you?  Did you so love that man?” exclaimed Stephen, a sudden pang seizing him of fiercest jealousy of the dead, whom he had never feared while he was living.

Mercy’s face contracted, as if a sharp pain had wrenched every nerve.

“No, I did not love him; that is, not as you mean.  You know how very dearly I did love him, though.”

“Dear darling, you are all worn out.  This shock has been too much for you.  You are not well,” said Stephen, tenderly, coming nearer to her and taking her hand.  “You must have rest and sleep at once.”

The hand was not Mercy’s hand any more than the voice had been Mercy’s voice.  Stephen dropped it, and, looking fixedly at Mercy’s eyes, whispered, “Mercy, you do not love me as you used to.”

Mercy’s eyes drooped; she locked her hands tightly together, and said, “I can’t, Stephen.”  No possible form of words could have been so absolute.  “I can’t!” “I do not,” would have been merciful, would have held a hope, by the side of this helpless, despairing, “I can’t.”

Stephen sank into a chair, and covered his eyes with his hands.  Mercy stood still, near the white callas; her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed on Stephen.  At last she spoke, in a voice of unutterable yearning and tenderness, “I do love you, Stephen.”

At these words, he pressed his hands tighter upon his eyes for one second, then shook them hastily free, and looking up at Mercy said gently,—­

“Yes, dear, I know you do; and I know you would have loved me always, if you could.  Do not be unhappy.  I told you a long time ago that to have had you once love me was enough for a lifetime.”  And Stephen smiled,—­a smile more pathetic than Mercy’s had been.  He went on, still in the same gentle voice,—­a voice out of which the very life seemed to have died,—­“I hoped, when we met, all would be right.  It used to be so much to you, Mercy, to look into my eyes, I thought you would trust me when you saw me.”