kindness.

She pressed his hand and let it go.

CHAPTER XIV. OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS

The cottage inhabited by Weyburn's mother was on the southern hills over
London. He reached it late in the afternoon. His mother's old servant,
Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden. Her
steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the
door, and was the dead in her eyes. He dropped from no height; he stood
on a level with the blow. His apprehensions on the road had lowered him
to meet it.

'Too late, Martha?'

'She's in heaven, my dear.'

'She is lying alone?'

'The London doctor left half an hour back. She's gone. Slipped, and
fell, coming from her room, all the way down. She prayed for grace to
see her son. She 'll watch over him, be sure. You 'll not find it lone
and cold. A lady sits with it--Lady Ormont, they call her--a very kind
lady. My mistress liked her voice. Ever since news of the accident, up
to ten at night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of
bread-and-butter, with a teacup.'

'Weyburn went up-stairs.

Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room. They greeted
silently. He saw the white shell of the life that had flown; he took his
mother's hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.

Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated. Death was a stranger
to him. The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of
things as they were through the prayer for things as we would have
them. The vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had. It drew
sustainment from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the
earth claiming all we touch. He tried to summon vision of a soaring
spirituality; he could not; his understanding and senses were too
stricken. He prayed on. His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising
high out of earth, and in the clutch of death; but its being it had from
death, his love gave it food.

Prayer is power within us to communicate with the desired beyond our
thirsts. The goodness of the dear good mother gone was in him for
assurance of a breast of goodness to receive her, whatever the nature of
the eternal secret may be. The good life gone lives on in the mind;
the bad has but a life in the body, and that not lasting,--it extends,
dispreads, it worms away, it perishes. Need we more to bid the
mind perceive through obstructive flesh the God who reigns, a devil
vanquished? Be certain that it i