ved it her duty not to sympathize entirely with Ewbert's
morbid regret that it came too late. She was much more resigned than he
to the will of Providence, and she urged a like submissiveness upon him.

"Don't talk so!" he burst out. "It's horrible!" It was in the first
hours after Ewbert's return from Hilbrook's death-bed, and his spent
nerves gave way in a gush of tears.

"I see what you mean," she said, after a pause in which he controlled
his sobs. "And I suppose," she added, with a touch of bitterness, "that
you blame _me_ for taking you away from him here when he was coming
every night and sapping your very life. You were very glad to have me do
it at the time! And what use would there have been in your killing
yourself, anyway? It wasn't as if he were a young man with a career of
usefulness before him, that might have been marred by his not believing
this or that. He had been a complete failure every way, and the end of
the world had come for him. What did it matter whether such a man
believed that there was another world or not?"

"Emily! Emily!" the minister cried out. "What are you saying?"

Mrs. Ewbert broke down in her turn. "I don't know _what_ I'm saying!"
she retorted from behind her handkerchief. "I'm trying to show you that
it's your duty to yourself--and to me--and to people who can know how to
profit by your teaching and your example, not to give way as you're
doing, simply because a wornout old agnostic couldn't keep his hold on
the truth. I don't know what your Rixonitism is for if it won't let you
wait upon the divine will in such a thing, _too_. You're more
conscientious than the worst kind of Congregationalist. And now for you
to blame me"--

"Emily, I don't blame _you_," said her husband. "I blame myself."

"And you see that that's the same thing! You ought to thank me for
saving your life; for it was just as if you were pouring your heart's
blood into him, and I could see you getting more anaemic every day. Even
now you're not half as well as when you got home! And yet I do believe
that if you could bring old Hilbrook back into a world that he was sick
and tired of, you'd give your own life to do it."

XVII.

There was reason and there was justice in what she said, though they
were so chaotic in form, and Ewbert could not refuse to acquiesce.

After all, he had done what he could, and he would not abandon himself
to a useless remorse. He rather set himself to study the lesson of old