"John, my boy, died last Sunday, with your letter in his hand and it was buried with him. He requested that his books be sent to you, and they will be forwarded tomorrow.
"As soon as you can get away from your school and leave your grandmother, if she will not come too, come and see me. I must have some one to talk with about John; some one whom he knew and loved. When I try it with his father, he rushes from the room. John was an only child--now I am childless.
"He claimed to have seen you before he died, saying: 'Mother, I have just seen Jeannette; she is very beautiful.' Then he described you. I believe he really saw; and if his description fits, you can help me now. You were sitting on the Big Rock by the creek. It was the night of the fourth of June. I can write no more.
Jeannette had always felt that her life, which she knew was a silent, empty and colorless one without, was gloriously full and lit up within by a mystical treasure, which in some way she had stumbled upon and appropriated. She had soul companions who spoke to her with voices she alone could hear; that told of things in her own and other people's lives, that she and they might know, if they would but listen. She had lived a soul life; and it had a far-flung horizon.
When she received Mrs. Allen's letter telling of the death of her son, who had been her one friend around whom her childlike super-idealism and innocence had built a gorgeous bower, her heart was rent by its first great shock. She felt that her God of providence and love had cast her from heaven into a place of utter darkness where she had been caught by the net of fate and was now being dragged through all the sorrows and tragedies of life. Her voices were gone; she hated the silence about her; the mountain seemed dark and dangerous; the sun seemed harsh and cold; the grass but to cover graves; and the trees but mourners for the departed. He is gone! God has deserted me! She had yet to learn that the voices would return; that other friends would come; that life is neither tragic nor sad, though it has its hours of sadness and tragedy; and that sorrows make for themselves deep beds in our hearts wherein they sleep until life draws near its end and more than half of all our soul loves has passed to the other side.