Lady In Mourning

 She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year since his death, more than a year since the news came; she seemed as though she would remember and mourn forever. While we were shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday- nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time- his death and her sorrow-I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together- I heard them together. She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, "I have survived" while my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with her tone of despairing regret, the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation. 

"I have been very happy, very fortunate- very proud," she went on. "Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for- for life. And of all of this," she went on mournfully, "of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart- nothing remains- nothing but a memory. But I do not. I cannot- I cannot believe- not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never. Ah, but I believed in him more than anyone on earth- more than himself! He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance."