Stop! in the name of God!" she cried, fiercely, raising her hand as if
she appealed to Heaven.

It fell again. The hard voice sank to a tremulous, pitiful tone:

"Oh! stop, if you, are a man!"

They stood opposite each other in utter silence. The light had almost
faded. The face in the picture was no longer visible.

Bewildered and awed by the passionate grief of his companion, Lawrence
Newt said, gently,

"Why should I stop?"

The form before him had sunk into a chair. Both its hands were clasped
over the miniature. He heard the same strange voice like the wailing cry
of a child:

"Because I am the woman he loved--because I loved him."

CHAPTER XXVII.

GABRIEL AT HOME.

During all this time Gabriel Bennet is becoming a merchant. Every morning
he arrives at the store with the porter or before him. He helps him sweep
and dust; and it is Gabriel who puts Lawrence Newt's room in order,
laying the papers in place, and taking care of the thousand nameless
details that make up comfort. He reads the newspapers before the other
clerks arrive, and sits upon chests of tea or bales of matting in the
loft, that fill the air with strange, spicy, Oriental odors, and talks
with the porter. In the long, warm afternoons, too, when there is no
pressure of business, and the heat is overpowering, he sits also alone
among those odors, and his mind is busy with all kinds of speculations,
and dreams, and hopes.

As he walks up Broadway toward evening, his clear, sweet eyes see every
thing that floats by. He does not know the other side of the fine dresses
he meets any more than of the fine houses, with the smiling, glittering
windows. The sun shines bright in his eyes--the street is gay--he nods
to his friends--he admires the pretty faces--he wonders at the fast men
driving fast horses--he sees the flowers in the windows, the smiling
faces between the muslin curtains--he gazes with a kind of awe at the
funerals going by, and marks the white bands of the clergymen and the
physicians--the elm-trees in the hospital yard remind him of the woods at
Delafield; and here comes Abel Newt, laughing, chatting, smoking, with an
arm in the arms of two other young men, who are also smoking. As Gabriel
passes Abel their eyes meet. Abel nods airily, and Gabriel quietly; the
next moment they are back to back again--one is going up street, the
other down.

It is not one of the splendid houses before which Gabriel stops when he
has reach