The town clock in the schoolhouse was tolling eleven, as Miss Morgan turned the key in the front door.  The night was starry and inviting, and as her house stood among the trees, somewhat back from the street, Miss Morgan did not feel afraid to sit in a porch chair, refreshing herself, before going indoors.  The wind brought the odor of the lilacs from the bush at the house corner, and the woman sat drinking in the fragrance.  She saw a pair of lovers strolling by, who did not observe her.  She could hear the murmur of their voices; she did not try to catch their words.  She sat silently dreaming and wondering.  Again and again her eyes went to the stars in a vain questioning, and her lips moved.  Maybe she was asking “where,” maybe she was asking “why.”  As the moments slipped by, the years fell away from her.  She had carried her little romance in her heart unsullied by reality.  To-night the talk of Memorial Day had brought it all back, and the thrill of other days returned with the odor of the lilacs.  She yielded to a vague, crazy notion, and in an impulsive, girlish run she went to the corner of the porch and broke a sprig from the lilac-tree.

Then with a short sigh, that had just the hint of a smile in it, she took the lilac sprig into the house.  Perhaps she fancied that no one would see the flowers but she.  Maybe the oppressive stillness of the empty house burdened her.  Certainly something was heavy upon her, for there was no smile in the sigh that came deeply from her heart, as she locked the door.  It must have seemed lonely for Miss Morgan, coming from the crowded parlor, and the questions that her friends asked about her plans may have followed her.  Perhaps it was the answer to these questions that kept her awake.  She sat by her window and went over and over again the question, what should she do.  The wedding that had so recently livened the cottage kept coming to the little old woman’s mind, and with it came the bride.  When the other children had gone away, Miss Morgan let them go with her blessing, and was glad of their good fortunes.  But this last child to go had been Miss Morgan’s pet.  As the lonely spinster sat there she recalled how the child had been moulded by her; how she had fancied the child’s heart was hers, cherishing in it the ideals, the sentiment, the tendernesses that the older heart had held sacred for a lifetime.  Miss Morgan recalled how she and the girl had mingled their tears over the first long dress that their hands made, knowing, each of them, that it meant the coming of the parting.  As she looked into the awful vistas of the stars, the woman knew that she was one of God’s creatures, all alone—­without one soul that she might even signal to.

[Illustration:  The first long dress.]

The word “alone” came to her so strangely that she repeated it in a whisper.  Its sound touched some string within her bosom, and she put her head upon the open window sill and wept, sobbing the word “alone” until sleep soothed her.