t,' the speaker went on, 'as we came home. He said
Grey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, and he has had a love for it
ever since.'

'Did he die while you were there?' asked Catherine presently after a
silence. Her voice was dull and quiet. He thought her a strange woman.

'No,' said Flaxman, almost sharply; 'but by now it must be over. The
last sign of consciousness was a murmur of his children's names. They
brought them in, but his hands had to be guided to them. A few minutes
after it seemed to me that he was really gone, though he still breathed.
The doctor was certain there would be no more consciousness. We stayed
nearly another hour. Then his brother came, and some other relations,
and we left him. Oh, it is over now!'

Hugh Flaxman sat looking out into the dingy bit of London garden.
Penetrated with pity as he was, he felt the presence of Elsmere's pale,
silent, unsympathetic wife an oppression. How could she receive such a
story in such a way?

The door opened and Robert came in hurriedly.

'Good-night, Catherine--he has told you?'

He stood by her, his hand on her shoulder, wistfully looking at her, the
face full of signs of what he had gone through.

'Yes, it was terrible!' she said, with an effort.

His face fell. He kissed her on the forehead and went away.

When he was gone, Flaxman suddenly got up and leant against the open
French window, looking keenly down on his companion. A new idea had
stirred in him.

And presently, after more talk of the incident of the afternoon, and
when he had recovered his usual manner, he slipped gradually into the
subject of his own experiences in North R---- during the last six
months. He assumed all through that she knew as much as there was to be
known of Elsmere's work, and that she was as much interested as the
normal wife is in her husband's doings. His tact, his delicacy, never
failed him for a moment. But he spoke of his own impressions, of matters
within his personal knowledge. And since the Easter sermon he had been
much on Elsmere's track; he had been filled with curiosity about him.

Catherine sat a little way from him, her blue dress lying in long folds
about her, her head bent, her long fingers crossed on her lap. Sometimes
she gave him a startled look, sometimes she shaded her eyes, while her
other hand played silently with her watch-chain. Flaxman, watching her
closely, however little he might seem to do so, was struck by her
austere and deli