Here was one instead whom she could follow, a god indeed and a man as well--a god because human, and a man because so divine.
She said no more that night.

She looked into the bedroom for a few minutes, and saw the old woman asleep.

Her old hand lay out on the coverlet, and still between the fingers was twisted the silly string of beads.

Mabel went softly across in the shaded light, and tried to detach it; but the wrinkled fingers writhed and closed, and a murmur came from the half-open lips.

Ah! how piteous it was, thought the girl, how hopeless that a soul should flow out into such darkness, unwilling to make the supreme, generous surrender, and lay down its life because life itself demanded it! Then she went to her own room.
* * * * * The clocks were chiming three, and the grey dawn lay on the walls, when she awoke to find by her bed the woman who had sat with the old lady.
"Come at once, madam; Mrs.Brand is dying." IV Oliver was with them by six o'clock; he came straight up into his mother's room to find that all was over.
The room was full of the morning light and the clean air, and a bubble of bird-music poured in from the lawn.