two had warred.

Life took the spirit to itself, mysteriously; wove the gold thread into
its design of scarlet and earth and green, or else ... a hearth soon
cold, the walls of a Furnace crumbled and broken, a ruin covered from
memory by growing leafage and grass throbbing with the song of robins,
the shrilling of frogs in the meadow.

The doctor and nurse, Rudolph and Mariana, moved about him in a far, low
stir. At times they approached on a lighter flood of oxygen. Mariana
wiped his lips--an immaterial red stain. But what was that confounded
opera the name of which he had forgot? It would be in his albums; in the
first, probably. Downstairs. He had a sudden view of Mariana's face as
she returned with the volume. An expression of piercing concern
overwhelmed the reassuring smile she had for him.

Howat understood at last, he was dying. An instinctive shuddering
seized him; not in fear of the obliterating fact; but from a physical
revulsion bred by his long years of delicate habit.

Yet it wouldn't do to expose Mariana to the terrors; and, after a sharp,
inward struggle, he said almost fretfully, "Further on." She turned the
pages slowly; but no one could read without a decent light. He moved his
head, in an infinity of labour, toward the clear, grey opening of the
window, and saw a pattern of flying geese wavering across the tranquil
sky.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer

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