rain by which he was to follow her did not leave until evening,
and through those long hours he was picturing, with horrible vividness
and pain, the progress of Grizel up and down that terrible pass. Often
his shoulders shook in agony over what he saw, and he shuddered to the
teeth. He would have walked round the world on his knees to save her
this long anguish! And then again it was less something he saw than
something he was writing, and he altered it to make it more dramatic.
"I woke up." How awful that was! but in this new scene she uttered no
words. Lady Pippinworth was in his arms when they heard a little cry,
so faint that a violin string makes as much moan when it snaps. In a
dread silence he lit a match, and as it flared the figure of a girl
was seen upon the floor. She was dead; and even as he knew that she
was dead he recognized her. "Grizel!" he cried. The other woman who
had lured him from his true love uttered a piercing scream and ran
towards the hotel. When she returned with men and lanterns there was
no one in the arbour, but there were what had been a man and a girl.
They lay side by side. The startled onlookers unbared their heads. A
solemn voice said, "In death not divided."

He was not the only occupant of the hotel reading-room as he saw all
this, and when his head fell forward and he groaned, the others looked
up from their papers. A lady asked if he was unwell.

"I have had a great shock," he replied in a daze, pulling his hand
across his forehead.

"Something you have seen in your paper?" inquired a clergyman who had
been complaining that there was no news.

"People I knew," said Tommy, not yet certain which world he was in.

"Dead?" the lady asked sympathetically.

"I knew them well," he said, and staggered into the fresh air.

Poor dog of a Tommy! He had been a total abstainer from sentiment, as
one may say, for sixty hours, and this was his only glass. It was the
nobler Tommy, sternly facing facts, who by and by stepped into the
train. He even knew why he was going to Thrums. He was going to say
certain things to her; and he said them to himself again and again in
the train, and heard her answer. The words might vary, but they were
always to the same effect.

"Grizel, I have come back!"

He saw himself say these words, as he opened her door in Gavinia's
little house. And when he had said them he bowed his head.

At his sudden appearance she started up; then she stood pale and firm.