CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOVE THAT NEVER FAILS Go in peace, soul beautiful and blest! Yet high above the limits of our seeing, And folded far within the inmost heart, And deep below the deeps of conscious being, Thy splendor shineth! There O God! Thou art.
When John reached London it was in the gray misty dawning.

The streets were nearly deserted, and an air of melancholy hung over the long rows of low dwellings.

At Harlow House he saw at once that every window was shrouded, and he turned heartsick with the fear that he was too late.

A porter, whose eyes were red with weeping, admitted him, and there was an intolerable smell of drugs, the odor of which he recollected all the days of his future life.
"She is still alive, sir--but very ill." John could not answer, but his look was so urgent and so miserable the man divined the hurry of heart and spirit that he was possessed by and without another word led him to the room where the child lay dying.

The struggle was nearly over and John was spared the awful hours of slow strangulation which had already done their work.