He closed his eyes and rested for a few moments.  Then, arousing, he clasped her hands firmly, as though he would bear her away with him as he took his heavenward flight.

“Look there,” he said, “the river! go close with me-for this is our last moment.  Dawn, I am yours; not even death can part us.  I am not going; I am coming closer than any earthly relation could bring me to you; coming-call them.”

Parents and sister stood beside the bed with tearful eyes.  To them he was going far away.

Dawn saw not the death-dew on the marble brow, nor heeded the passing breath.  Another sight was given her, and while they stood so statue-like with anguish, her eyes beheld a soft mist gather like snowflakes on the head; and while the breath grew quick and short, this seemed to pulsate with life, until a face was outlined there.  That face the same, yet not the same, but her own dear Ralph’s, immortalized, set in a softer, finer light.  Her being pulsated with new joy.  A tide of life seemed to have flown into her heart, leaving no room for pain.

A moan struck on her ear; so sad that she started, and the vision fled.

“O, Ralph, my own loved boy; he’s gone, he’s gone,” burst from the mother’s sorrowing heart, as they bore her from the room.

Marion stood dumb with grief, while the poor stricken father bowed his head and wept bitter tears for his lost son.

Had Dawn no grief, that she could stand there and look so calmly on?  What made her feel so indifferent to the dead form on which she gazed?  Because his life, the life that had once animated it, had passed into hers, and they were one and united.  Ralph, warm with life, was imaged in her heart and mind.  The clay he bore about him, that husk, had no claim upon her being now, and with scarce a look at the body, she walked away.

“I think she could never have loved him, or she would not seem so cold,” were the words that floated to her as she passed from the room where lay all that was mortal of Ralph.

It was as near as she could expect to be understood here, in a world where so much of her real self was hidden; but such words touched her sensibilities none the less, notwithstanding her philosophy.  They went deep, like an arrow, into her heart, and then she knew that the house of mourning was no place for her; that she must go, and to the world appear cold and unfeeling, while her heart was ready to burst with its deep emotion.

She left them, and they never knew how dearly she loved him, nor how close his soul was linked with her own.  They mourned him as dead, while to her he became each hour a reality, a tangible, living presence, full of tenderness and love.

Miss Weston met Dawn as she passed out of the house, with that look of tender pity, which says, “I know you suffer.”  In that look their souls met and mounted to higher states.  They could not speak, for the tears which flowed over the graves of their dead; their sorrows made them one and akin.