ng for an instant, beyond the bridge,
in the unearthly blue?

And quietly--heavily--like an irrevocable sentence, there came, breathed
to him as it were from that winter cold and loneliness, words that he
had read an hour or two before, in the little red book beside his
hand--words in which the gayest of French poets has fixed, as though by
accident, the most tragic of all human cries--

'Quittez le long espoir, et les vastes pensees.'

He sank on his knees, wrestling with himself and with the bitter longing
for life, and the same words rang through him, deafening every cry but
their own.

'_Quittez--quittez--le long espoir et les vastes pensees!_'

CHAPTER LI

There is little more to tell. The man who had lived so fast was no long
time dying. The eager soul was swift in this as in all else.

The day after Elsmere's return from Murewell, where he left the squire
still alive (the telegram announcing the death reached Bedford Square a
few hours after Robert's arrival), Edmondson came up to see him and
examine him. He discovered tubercular disease of the larynx, which
begins with slight hoarseness and weakness, and develops into one of the
most rapid forms of phthisis. In his opinion it had been originally set
up by the effects of the chill at Petites Dalles acting upon a
constitution never strong, and at that moment peculiarly susceptible to
mischief. And of course the speaking and preaching of the last four
months had done enormous harm.

It was with great outward composure that Elsmere received his _arret de
mort_ at the hands of the young doctor, who announced the result of his
examination with a hesitating lip and a voice which struggled in vain to
preserve its professional calm. He knew too much of medicine himself to
be deceived by Edmondson's optimist remarks as to the possible effect of
a warm climate like Algiers on his condition. He sat down, resting his
head on his hands a moment; then, wringing Edmondson's hand, he went out
feebly to find his wife.

Catherine had been waiting in the dining-room, her whole soul one dry
tense misery. She stood looking out of the window taking curious heed of
a Jewish wedding that was going on in the square, of the preposterous
bouquets of the coachman and the gaping circle of errand-boys. How
pinched the bride looked in the north wind!

When the door opened and Catherine saw her husband come in--her young
husband, to whom she had been married not yet four