ly shared the watching between
them.

One morning he had just dropped into a fevered sleep. Catherine was
sitting by the window gazing out into a dawn-world of sun which reminded
her of the summer sunrises at Petites Dalles. She looked the shadow of
herself. Spiritually, too, she was the shadow of herself. Her life was
no longer her own: she lived in him--in every look of those eyes--in
every movement of that wasted frame.

As she sat there, her Bible on her knee, her strained unseeing gaze
resting on the garden and the sea, a sort of hallucination took
possession of her. It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son of
man passing over the misty slope in front of her, that the dim majestic
figure turned and beckoned. In her half-dream she fell on her knees.
'Master!' she cried in agony, 'I cannot leave him! Call me not! My life
is here. I have no heart--it beats in his.'

And the figure passed on, the beckoning hand dropping at its side. She
followed it with a sort of anguish, but it seemed to her as though mind
and body were alike incapable of moving--that she would not if she
could. Then suddenly a sound from behind startled her. She turned, her
trance shaken off in an instant, and saw Robert sitting up in bed.

For a moment her lover, her husband, of the early days was before
her--as she ran to him. But he did not see her.

An ecstasy of joy was on his face; the whole man bent forward listening.

'_The child's cry!--thank God! Oh! Meyrick--Catherine--thank God!_'

And she knew that he stood again on the stairs at Murewell in that
September night which gave them their first-born, and that he thanked
God because her pain was over.

An instant's strained looking, and, sinking back into her arms, he gave
two or three gasping breaths, and died.

* * * * *

Five days later Flaxman and Rose brought Catherine home. It was supposed
that she would return to her mother at Burwood. Instead, she settled
down again in London, and not one of those whom Robert Elsmere had loved
was forgotten by his widow. Every Sunday morning, with her child beside
her, she worshipped in the old ways; every Sunday afternoon saw her
black-veiled figure sitting motionless in a corner of the Elgood Street
Hall. In the week she gave all her time and money to the various works
of charity which he had started. But she held her peace. Many were
grateful to her; some loved her; none understood her. She lived fo