His sensitive chivalrous sense, even in this extreme weakness,
remembered the tragic weight that attaches inevitably to dying words.
Let him not do more harm than good.

He rested a little. They brought him food; and Aldous sat beside him
making pretence to read, so that he might be encouraged to rest. His
sister came and went; so did the doctor. But when they were once more
alone, Hallin put out his hand and touched his companion.

"What is it, dear Ned?"

"Only one thing more, before we leave it. Is that _all_ that stands
between you now--the whole? You spoke to me once in the summer of
feeling _angry_, more angry than you could have believed. Of course, I
felt the same. But just now you spoke of its all being your fault. Is
there anything changed in your mind?"

Aldous hesitated. It was extraordinarily painful to him to speak of the
past, and it troubled him that at such a moment it should trouble
Hallin.

"There is nothing changed, Ned, except that perhaps time makes _some_
difference always. I don't want now"--he tried to smile--"as I did then,
to make anybody else suffer for my suffering. But perhaps I marvel even
more than I did at first, that--that--she could have allowed some things
to happen as she did!"

The tone was firm and vibrating; and, in speaking, the whole face had
developed a strong animation most passionate and human.

Hallin sighed.

"I often think," he said, "that she was extraordinarily immature--much
more immature than most girls of that age--as to feeling. It was really
the brain that was alive."

Aldous silently assented; so much so that Hallin repented himself.

"But not now," he said, in his eager dying whisper; "not now. The plant
is growing full and tall, into the richest life."

Aldous took the wasted hand tenderly in his own. There was something
inexpressibly touching in this last wrestle of Hallin's affection with
another's grief. But it filled Aldous with a kind of remorse, and with
the longing to free him from that, as from every other burden, in these
last precious hours of life. And at last he succeeded, as he thought, in
drawing his mind away from it. They passed to other things. Hallin,
indeed, talked very little more during the day. He was very restless and
weak, but not in much positive suffering. Aldous read to him at
intervals, from Isaiah or Plato, the bright sleepless eyes following
every word.

At last the light began to sink. The sunset flooded in from the