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Her ear, quicker than mine, heard some sign within and she left me. But she was back almost at once, whispering:

“She knows you’re here, and says she has a message to her husband which she can give only to you.”

We gazed into each other’s eyes. “Go in,” she said.

As I entered, Senda tenderly disengaged herself, went out, and closed the door.

I drew near in silence and she began at once to speak, bidding me take the chair Senda had left, and with a tender smile thanking me for coming.

Then she said faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, “I want you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband’s affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, almost totally–almost totally—-“

“Do you mean–intangible?”

“Yes, yes, intangible. Then if he should say that the intangible part is the priceless part–the life, the beauty, the very essence of the whole matter–isn’t it strange that we women are slower than men to see that– tell him I saw it, saw it and confessed it when for his sake I was slipping away from him by stealth out of life up to my merciful Judge.

“I may not be saying these things in their right order, but–tell him I wish he’d marry again; only let him first be sure the woman loves him as truly and deeply as he is sure to love her. I find I’ve never truly loved him till now. If he doesn’t know it don’t ever tell him; but tell him I died loving him and blessing him–for the unearned glorious love he gave me all my days. That’s all. That’s all to him. But I would like to send one word to”–she lifted her hand–

“Across the street?” I murmured.

Her eyes said yes. “Tell him–you may never see the right time for it, but if you do–tell him I craved his forgiveness.”

I shook my head.

“Yes–yes, tell him so; it was far the most my fault; he is such a child; such a child of nature, I mean. Tell him I said it sounds very pretty to call ourselves and each other children of nature, but we have no right to be such. The word is ‘Be thou clean,’ and if we are not masters of nature we can’t do it. Tell him that, will you? And tell him he has nothing to grieve for; I was only a dangerous toy, and I want him to love the dear Father for taking it away from him before he had hurt himself.

“Now I am ready to go–only–that hymn those black women–in the cemetery –you remember? I’ve made another verse to it. You’ll find it–afterward– on a scrap of paper between the leaves of my Bible. It isn’t good poetry, of course; it’s the only verse I ever composed. May I say it to you just for my–my testimony? It’s this:

Yet though I have sinned, Lord, all others above,
Though feeble my prayers, Lord; my tears all unseen;
I’ll trust in thy love, Lord; I’ll trust in thy love–
O I’ll trust in thy love like Mary Mahgaleen.”

An exalted smile lighted her face as she sunk deeper into the pillows. She tried to speak again, but her voice failed. I bent my ear and she whispered–“Senda.”

As I beckoned Senda in, Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of sweet drink and the candle.

“Do you want to see a parable?” she whispered, and all but blinded with tears, she pointed to the lost moth lying half in, half out of the window, still beautiful but crushed; crushed with its wings full spread, not by anyone’s choice, but because there are so many things in this universe that not even God can help from being as they are.