The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

104 The Gates Ajar.
had been in her lonely chamber? Ah, it is
simply real to her. Who, indeed, but her
Saviour and her husband?
She did not seem inclined to talk, and stole
away from me presently, and out of doors; she
was wrapped in her blanket shawl, and had
thrown a shimmering white hood over her gray
hair. I wondered where she could be going,
and sat still at the window watching her. She
opened and shut the gate softly; and, turning
her face towards the churchyard, walked up
the street and out of my sight.
She feels nearer to him in the resting-place
of the dead. Her heart cries after the grave
by which she will never sit and weep again;
on which she will never plant the roses any
more.
As I sat watching and thinking this, the
faint light struck her slight figure and little
shimmering hood again, and she walked down
the street and in with steady step.
When she came up and stood beside me,
smiling, with the light knitted thing thrown
back on her shoulders, her face seemed to rise
from it as from a snowy cloud; and for her
look, I wish Raphael could have had it for
one of his rapt Madonnas.