She hid each broken phrase in her heart, knowing them rare, and wondering at the treasure entrusted to her.

Some of her girlhood she left behind her as she listened.
Something new, yet surely old, stirred faintly.

What was this love he spoke of?
The breath of bygone passion brushed across her untouched soul and left it trembling! Into the long silence which followed the story her voice drifted like a sigh.
"If she could only have lived until you came!" It was of the girl wife she thought.

Her heart was full of an aching pity for that other girl whom life had cheated of her sweetest gift.
More than the man who had lived out a bitter expiation, did she pity her who had missed the fight, slipped out of the struggle.

Death seemed to Esther such a terrible thing.