ODOUR OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS

reparation. There were the children -- but the
children belonged to life. This dead man had
nothing to do with them. He and she were only
channels through which life had flowed to issue in
the children. She was a mother -- but how awful
she knew it now to have been a wife. And he, dead
now, how awful he must have felt it to be a husband.
She felt that in, the next world he would be a
stranger to her. If they met there, in the beyond,
they would only be ashamed of what had been
before. The children had come, for some mysterious
reason, out of both of them. But the children did
not unite them. Now he was dead, she knew how
eternally he was apart from her, how eternally he
had nothing more to do with her. She saw this
episode of her life closed. They had denied each
other in life. Now he had withdrawn. An anguish
came over her. It was finished then : it had become
hopeless between them long before he died. Yet he
had been her husband. But how little !

" Have you got his shirt, 'Lizabeth ? "

Elizabeth turned without answering, though she
strove to weep and behave as her mother-in-law
expected. But she could not, she was silenced. She
went into the kitchen and returned with the
garment.

"It is aired," she said, grasping the cotton shirt
here and there to try. She was almost ashamed to
handle him ; what right had she or anyone to lay
hands on him ; but her touch was humble on his
body. It was hard work to clothe him. He was so
heavy and inert. A terrible dread gripped her all
the while : that he could be so heavy and utterly