them to keep away--all the people in the house?'

'This is your own room?'

'I live here with my sister.'

'I will ask them to respect your wish. The body must stay here for the
present, though.'

'Oh yes, yes, I know.'

'Is your sister at home?'

'She will be soon. Please tell them not to come here.'

She was alone again with the dead. It cost her great efforts of mind to
convince herself that Mutimer really had breathed his last; it seemed to
her but a moment since she heard him speak, heard him laugh; was not a
trace of the laugh even now discernible on his countenance? How was it
possible for life to vanish in this way? She constantly touched him,
spoke to him. It was incredible that he should not be able to hear her.

Her love for him was immeasurable. Bitterness she had long since
overcome, and she had thought that love, too, was gone with it. She had
deceived herself. Her heart, incredible as it may seem, had even known
a kind of hope--how else could she have borne the life which fate laid
upon her?--the hope that is one with love, that asks nothing of the
reason, nor yields to reason's contumely. He had been smitten dead at
the moment that she loved him dearest.

Her sister Kate came in. She had been spending the day with friends in
another part of London. When just within the door she stopped and looked
at the body nervously.

'Emma!' she said. 'Why don't you come downstairs? Mrs. Lake'll let us
have her back room, and tea's waiting for you. I wonder how you _can_
stay here.'

'I can't come. I want to be alone, Kate. Tell them not to come up.'

'But you can't stay here all night, child!'

'I can't talk. I want to be alone. Perhaps I'll come down before long.'

Kate withdrew and went to gossip with the people who were incessantly
coming and going in the lower part of the house. The opening and
shutting of the front door, the sound of voices, the hurrying feet upon
the staircase, were audible enough to Emma. She heard, too, the crowds
that kept passing along the street, their shouts, their laughter, the
voices of the policemen bidding them move on. It was all a nightmare,
from which she strove to awake.

At length she was able to weep. Gazing constantly at the dead face,
she linked it at last with some far-off memory of tenderness, and that
brought her tears. She held the cold hand against her heart and eased
herself with passionate sobbing, with low wails, with loving utterance
of his name. Th