for you. My life shall be devoted to
supplication. I shall never lose hope; I shall never doubt. Love like
that I bear you must in some way be redemptive in its nature. All will
be well. Once more, good-bye."

She smiled on him with unutterable tenderness, and with her eyes still
fixed upon his haggard face began to move slowly toward the door.

He did not stir; he could not move, but remained upon his knees with his
hands extended towards her in supplication.

Like some exalted figure in a dream he saw her vanish from his sight;
the world became empty and dark; his powers of endurance had been
overtaxed; he lost all consciousness, and fell forward on the floor.

CHAPTER XXI.

A SIGNAL IN THE NIGHT

"How far that little candle throws his beams!"

--Merchant of Venice.

A month of dangerous and almost fatal sickness followed. When at last,
through the care of a faithful negro "mammy," the much-enduring man
crept out from the valley of the shadow of death, he learned that
Pepeeta had secured a little room in a tenement house and was supporting
herself with her needle, in the use of which she had become an expert in
those glad hours when she made her baby's clothes, and those sad ones
when she sat far into the night awaiting David's return.

On the morning of the first day in which he was permitted to leave the
house he made his way to Pepeeta's new quarters.

"And so this is to be her home," he said with a shudder as he looked up
to the attic window. Every day this pale young man was seen, by the
curious neighbors, hovering about the place. As for the object of his
love and solicitude, she began at once to be a bread-winner. The
delicate girl who never in her life until now had experienced a care
about the necessities of existence began to struggle for bread in
company with the thousands of poor and needy, creatures by whom she
found herself surrounded. The only hunger she experienced was that of
the heart. She soon became conscious of David's presence, and derived
from it a pleasure which only added to her pain. She avoided him as best
she could, and her determination and her sanctity prevented him from
approaching her.

David could never remember how many days were passed in this way, for he
lost count of time, and lived more like a man in a dream than like one
in a world of life and action.

But as his strength slowly returned, he grew more and more restive under
the restraint which Pe