"Is this the end?" rasped the dead leaves, as the north wind swept them in unresisting herds down the avenue of beeches. "The end! The end!" wailed the north wind. "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth—" Then Hope, born of Faith and Experience, cried: "But the word of our God shall stand forever! While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. This is not death, but sleep. When spring sounds the reveillé, life will stir and move again beneath the sod; all nature will respond, and there shall come once more the great awakening; the dismal sentries of darkness and of death may cease to challenge; the troops of light and life march on their way. Again the victory will be with spring."

*

During the year, now nearly over, Diana's inner life had reflected each of these transitions, going on around her, in her own park and gardens.

In the lonely despairing weeks following her wedding-day, her heart seemed numb and dead; her empty arms stiffened like leafless branches. Her love had awakened, only to find itself entombed.

But, with the arrival of David's first letter, there burst upon her winter the glad promise of spring.

"My dear wife," wrote David; and, as she read the words, strong possessive arms seemed to enfold her. Though distance divided, she was, unalterably, that to him: "My dear wife."

The letter proceeded, in calm friendliness, to give her a full account of his voyage; nothing more; yet with an intimacy of detail, an assurance of her interest, which came as balm to Diana's sore heart. And the letter ended: "Yours ever, David Rivers."

Then followed a sweet summer-time of wonderful promise. David's letters reached her by every mail. They always began: "My dear wife"; they always ended: "Yours ever, David Rivers"; they held no word of anything closer or more intimate in their tie, than was in the bond; yet, as Diana shared his hopes and expectations, his difficulties, and their surmounting; as she followed with him along each step in the new development of his work, the materialising of his ideas, the fulfilment of his plans, by means of her gift of gold—it seemed to her that all this was but the promise of spring; that a glad summer must soon come, when David's heart should awaken to a need—not only of her sympathy and of her help, but of herself; that, at no distant date, the mail would bring a letter, saying: "My wife, I want you. Come to me!"