e hilltops,
towering, dark, and hard, over the house, to disappear again behind the
raindrops and shaken leaves. Each breath drawn by the storm was like the
clash of a thousand cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious
of its fury.

Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with Scruff
in her arms, rocking slightly to and fro. When Christian passed, she
caught her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday, Chris!"

Mr. Treffry stirred.

"What's that? Thunder?--it's cooler. Where am I? Chris!"

Dawney signed for her to take his place.

"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said. "It's near now." She bent across him, and her
tears fell on his forehead.

"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"

He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.

For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned,
and faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers. The storm had died
away, but very far off the thunder was still muttering.

His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into that
abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life from
death.

At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's breathing,
soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.

XXIX

One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's death,
Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's Wood.
The sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which shone little
gleams of blue. Now and then a bright shower fell, sprinkling the trees,
where every twig was curling upwards as if waiting for the gift of its
new leaves. And it seemed to her that the boughs thickened and budded
under her very eyes; a great concourse of sparrows had gathered on those
boughs, and kept raising a shrill chatter. Over at the far side of the
room Harz was working at a picture.

On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she
has only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
possessions are safe under her hand. She looked at Harz with that
possessive smile. But as into the brain of one turning in his bed grim
fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there leaped
into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had found her
kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body. She seemed to see again the dead face,
so gravely quiet, and furrowless. She seemed to see he