bed, and nestling down by her father, as she had done only the evening before, when he had put his arm round her, and they had talked together; but now a chill dread crept over her—­a sense of change, of separation; she had not even the courage to raise the sheet and look upon his face.  She stood gazing for a moment, afraid to go back into the darkness of her own room; and then, with a sudden movement, as though urged by some terror, she turned quickly away, and went swiftly to the open window.  She looked down into the narrow, dark street, dimly illuminated by an occasional lamp; she looked up to the starlit space of sky visible above the house-roofs and chimneys, and neither above nor below did she find any comfort; for a sudden awful realization of death had come to her in the darkness and silence, almost too keen and terrible for our poor little Madelon to bear—­each realization, too, a fresh shock, as with an instinctive shrinking from this new consciousness of an intolerable weight her mind slipped away into some more familiar channel, only to be brought rudely back to this fact, so unfamiliar, and yet the only one for her now, in this sudden shattering of all her small world of hopes and joys and affections.  And is it not, in truth, terrible, this strength of facts, when we are, as it were, brought face to face with them, and held there till we recognise them?  No means of evasion, no hope of appeal from what is, in its very nature, fixed, unalterable, irrevocable; the sin is committed, the loved one gone, the friendship broken and dead, and for us remains the realization in remorse, and heart-breaking, and despair.

Which of us is strong enough to wrestle with facts such as these? which one of us can look them long in the face and live?  In the desperate recoil, some of us find ourselves recklessly striving to forget and ignore them, and some find a surer refuge in facts that are stronger still than they; but to one and all, in kindly compassion to human weakness, each new emotion, each passing interest and trivial incident, combines to interpose a barrier between us and the terrible moment that overwhelmed us; and time which, in later years, seems to drag out the slow hours and days into long ages of dreary grief, can deal swiftly and mercifully with a little child.  Hardly had Madelon grasped the true measure of her grievous loss, or tasted its full bitterness, when the reaction came with a great burst of tears, and crouching down in the corner by the window where she had spent so many hours of the previous day, she sobbed away half the terror and awe that were oppressing her poor little heart.  Presently she began to grow sorry for herself in a vague, half-conscious sort of way—­poor little Madelon, sitting there all alone crying, no one to help her, no one to comfort her—­then the sobs came at longer and longer intervals as she gradually lost consciousness of where she was, or why she was there; and with the tears still wet on her cheek, she was nearly asleep again, when she was roused by some one bringing a light into the room; it was Graham, who had come to fetch something he had left on the table, and to see that all was quiet.