He wants his animals," said Marcella, the tears pouring down her
cheeks. She lifted them and put them on his breast, laying the cold
fingers over them.

Then he tried to speak.

"Daddy!" he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; "take 'em to
Daddy!"

She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, and
shaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterious
smile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing life
that ran through the limbs.

A heavy sound swung through the air--a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurd
held up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She knelt
there, struck motionless by terror--by recollection.

"Oh, Jim!" she said, under her breath--"my Jim!"

The plaintive tone--as of a creature that has not even breath and
strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it--broke
Marcella's heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in
her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find
wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband's
death were words of prayer--the old shuddering cries wherewith the human
soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompassing
Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.

CHAPTER XV.

Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the
door of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had
heard his ring, was hurrying away.

"Don't go," he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. "I
want all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has _actually_
brought herself to regard this man's death as in some sort my doing--as
something which ought to separate us?"

Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed in
his hand. But she did not need the explanation. She had been expecting
him at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.

"Marcella must explain for herself," she said, after a moment's thought.
"I have no right whatever to speak for her. Besides, frankly, I do not
understand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise that
I have no part or lot in her--that I never had. It is just enough. She
was brought up away from me. And I have no natural hold. I cannot help
you, or any one else, with her."

Aldous had been very tolerant and compassionate in the past of this
strange mother's abdication of her maternal place, and of its p