She gazed with an inexplicable feeling of affection upon Mercy's placid brow.

She lifted the lifeless hands and laid them down again in a less constrained position.
She, too, noted the broad gold ring, and said,-- "She has been loved then.

I wonder if he is alive!" The door was closed, and no one was in the room.

With a strange impulse she could not account for to herself, she said, "I will kiss her for him," and bent and kissed the cold forehead.

Then she laid the fragrant vines around the face and across the bosom, and went away, feeling an inexplicable sense of nearness to the woman she had kissed.