Close at hand, a short four feet under that mound of grass, was the form he had so often held in the embrace of his arms; the face, the very face he had kissed, that face with the hair of gold making three-cornered the round white forehead, the violet-blue eyes, heavy-lidded, with their strange oriental slant upward toward the temples; the sweet full lips, almost Egyptian in their fulness--all that strange, perplexing, wonderful beauty, so troublous, so enchanting, so out of all accepted standards.
He bent down, dropping upon one knee, a hand upon the headstone, and read again the inscription.

Then instinctively his hand left the stone and rested upon the low mound of turf, touching it with the softness of a caress; and then, before he was aware of it, he was stretched at full length upon the earth, beside the grave, his arms about the low mound, his lips pressed against the grass with which it was covered.

The pent-up grief of nearly twenty years rose again within his heart, and overflowed, irresistible, violent, passionate.

There was no one to see, no one to hear.

Vanamee had no thought of restraint.