"Weeping! dear Gertrude," exclaimed John, as he entered his sister's
studio, and seated himself by her side.
Gertrude laid her head upon his shoulder without replying.
"You do not often see me thus," she said, after a pause. "To-day is the
anniversary of my husband's death, and as I sat at the window and saw
the autumn wind showering down the bright leaves, I thought of that
mournful October day, when, turning despairingly away from his dying
moans, I walked to the window of his sick room, and saw the leaves
eddying past as they do now. I could almost see again before me that
pallid face, almost hear those fleeting, spasmodic breaths, and all the
old agony woke up again within me. And yet," said Gertrude, smiling
through her tears, "such blissful memories of his love came with it! Oh!
surely, John, love like this perishes not with its object--dies not in
this world?
"And my little Arthur, too, John--you have never seen my treasures. You
have never looked upon the faces which made earth such a paradise for
me;" and touching a spring in a rosewood box near her, Gertrude drew
from it the pictures of her husband and child, and as John scanned their
features in silence, she leaned upon his shoulder, and the bright
teardrops fell like rain upon them.
"It is seldom that I allow myself to look at them," she said. "I were
unfitted else for life's duties."
"It is a fine face,", said John, gazing at that of Gertrude's husband.
"It is a faithful index of the noble soul you worship. Your boy's face
is yours in miniature, Gertrude."
"Yes; and I so deplored it after my husband's death; I used to watch so
eagerly for one flitting expression of his father's."
John replaced the pictures in the box with a sigh, and sat a few moments
thinking.
"Gertrude, do you know that your nature would never have fully developed
itself in prosperity? The rain was as needful as the sunshine to ripen
and perfect it."
"Yes, I feel that," said his sister. "And when I look around and see
divided households; husbands and wives wedded to misery; parents, whose
clutching love for gold swallows up every parental feeling; children,
whose memories of home are hate, and discord, and all uncharitableness,
I hug my brief day of unalloyed happiness to my bosom, and cheerfully
accept my lot at His hand who hath disposed it."