June was still vivid and sweet with the rapture of summer.

It was she herself who had changed.
Looking backward, she almost wondered how she had endured the agony of love and suffering and sacrifice which had been compressed into a single year.

She wished sometimes that they had let her die when she was so ill--let her slip easily out of the world while the delirium of fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had lost.

It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone out of it.

Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was a thousand times worth living.
And behind it all--back of the tears and suffering which seemed so cruelly incomprehensible--there lay always the inscrutable and splendid purposes of God, and the Ultimate Light beyond.