ith the faint
promise of further improvement if the medical instructions were obeyed
to the letter. Then followed for Mavis long, scarcely endurable night
watches, which were so protracted that often it seemed as if the hand
of time had stopped, as if darkness for ever enshrouded the world.
When, at last, day came, she would make an effort to snatch a few
hours' sleep in order to fit her for the next night's attendance on the
loved one. The shock of her husband's illness immediately increased her
faith in Divine Providence. It was as if her powerlessness in the face
of this new disaster were such that she relied on something more than
human aid to give her help. Always, before she tried to sleep, she
prayed long and fervently to the Most High that He would restore her
beloved husband to comparative health; that He would interfere to
arrest the fell disease with which he was afflicted. She prayed as a
mother for a child, sick unto death. At the back of her mind she had
formed a resolution that, if her prayer were answered, she would
believe in God for the rest of her life with all her old-time fervour.
She dared not voice this resolve to herself; she believed that, if she
did so, it would be in the nature of a threat to the Almighty; also,
she feared that, if her husband got worse, it would be consequently
incumbent on her to lose the much needed faith in things not of this
world. Thus, when Mavis knelt she poured out her heart in supplication.
She was not only praying for her husband but for herself.

But Mavis's prayer was unheard. Her husband steadily got worse. One
night, when the blackness of the sky seemed as a pall thrown over the
corpse of her hopes, she took up a chance magazine, in which some
verses, written to God by an author, for whose wide humanity Mavis had
a great regard, attracted her.

The substance of these lines was a complaint of His pitiless disregard
of the world's sorrow. One phrase particularly attracted her: it was
"His unweeting way."

"That is it," thought Mavis. "That expresses exactly what I feel. There
is, there must be, a God, but His ways are truly unweeting. He has seen
so much pain that He has got used to it and grown callous."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

THE WELL-BELOVED

One morning, when Mavis was leaving Harold, she was recalled by one of
the nurses. He had signalled that he wished to see her again. Upon
Mavis hastening to his side, he tried to speak, but could not. His eyes