rity of an infant. The struggle was finished, and
he had emerged from it with the right to breathe. His hair had been
brushed, and his beard combed. It was uncanny, this tidiness, this
calm, this passivity. The memory of the night grew fantastic and
remote. Surely the old man must spring up frantically in a moment, to
beat off his enemy! Surely his agonised cry for Clara must be ringing
through the room! But nothing of him stirred. Air came and went
through those parted and relaxed lips with the perfect efficiency of a
healthy natural function. And yet he was not asleep. His obstinate and
tremendous spirit was now withdrawn somewhere, into some fastness more
recondite than sleep; not far off; not detached, not dethroned; but
undiscoverably hidden, and beyond any summons. Edwin gazed and gazed,
until his heart could hold no more of the emotion which this
mysteriously impressive spectacle, at once majestic and poignant,
distilled into it. Then he silently left the old woman sitting dully by
the spirit concealed in its ruined home.

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FOUR.

In the evening he was resting on the sofa in the drawing-room. Auntie
Hamps was near him, at work on some embroidery. In order that her dear
Edwin might doze a little if he could, she refrained from speech; from
time to time she stopped her needle and looked reflectively at the
morsel of fire, or at the gas. She had been in the house since before
tea. Clara also had passed most of the day there, with a few intervals
at her own home; but now Clara was gone, and Janet too had gone. Darius
was tiring them all out, in his mild and senseless repose. He remained
absolutely still, and the enigma which he so indifferently offered to
them might apparently continue for ever; at any rate the doctor's
statement that he might keep as he was for days and days, beyond help,
hung over the entire household, discouraging and oppressive. The energy
of even Auntie Hamps was baffled. Only Alicia, who had come in, as she
said, to take Janet's place, insisted on being occupied. This was one
of the nights dedicated by family arrangement to her betrothed, but
Alicia had found pleasure in sacrificing herself, and him, to her very
busy sense of duty.

Suddenly the drawing-room door was pushed open, without a sound, and
Alicia, in all the bursting charm of her youthfulness and the delicious
naivete of her self-importa