The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

240 The Gates Ajar.
though very softly now, and still the cheery
sunshine shimmers in, and still we talk with
clasping hands, less often and more pleasantly.
Morning and noon and evening come and go;
the snow drifts down and the rain falls softly;
clouds form and break and hurry past the windows; shadows melt and lights are shattered,
and little rainbows are prisoned by the icicles
that hang from the eaves.
I sit and watch them, and watch the sicklamp flicker in the night, and watch the blue
morning crawl over the hills; and the old words
are stealing down my thought: That is the
substance, this the shadow; that the reality, this
the dream.
I watch her face upon the pillow; the happy
secret on its lips; the smile within its eyes. It
is nearly a year now since God sent the face
to me. What it has done for me He knows;
what the next year and all the years are to be
without it, He knows, too.
It is slipping away, -slipping. And Imust - lose it.
Perhaps I should not have said what I said
to-night; but being weak from watching, and
seeing how glad she was to go, seeing how all
the peace was for her, all the pain for us, I