as the one thing that had not betrayed her.

There had been moments, lately, when she had had almost the assurance of
its ultimate return; when she had felt the stirring of the old impulse,
the immortal instinct; when she longed for the rushing of her rivers,
and the race of the wind on her mountains of the Marches. It would come
back, her power, if she were there, in the place where it was born; if
she could get away from streets and houses and people; if she got away
from Laura.

But Laura was the one thing she could not get away from. She had to be
faithful to her trust.

It would be seven weeks, at the least, before Owen could come back. Her
letter would take three weeks to reach him, and he would have to make
arrangements. She wondered whether the Kiddy could hold out so long.

All night she was tormented by this fear, of the Kiddy's not holding
out, of her just missing it; of every week being one more nail hammered,
as she had once said, into the Kiddy's little coffin; and it was with a
poignant premonition that she received a message from Addy Ranger in the
morning. Miss Ranger was down-stairs; she had something to say to Miss
Lempriere; she must see her. She couldn't come up; she hadn't a minute.

Addy stood outside on the doorstep. She was always in a violent hurry
when on her way to Fleet Street, the scene for the time being of her
job. But this morning her face showed signs of a profounder agitation.
She made a rush at Nina.

"Oh, Miss Lempriere, will you go to Laura?"

"Is she ill?"

"No. _He_ is. He's dying. He's in a fit. I think it's killing her."

The blinds were down when Nina reached the house in Camden Town.

The fit--it was apoplexy, Mrs. Baxter informed her--had not been long.
It had come on, mercifully, in his sleep. Mercifully (Mrs. Baxter leant
on it); but Miss Lempriere had better go up at once to Miss Gunning.

Nina went without a word.

The bed had been drawn into the middle of the small back room. The body
of the old man lay on it, covered with a sheet. His head was tilted a
little, showing the prone arch of the peaked nose; the jaw was bound
with a handkerchief. Already the features were as they had been in the
days before disease had touched them. Death had constrained them to
their primal sanity. Death dominated them like a living soul.

The death-bed and its burden filled the room. In the narrow space
between it and the wall little Laura went to and fro, to and fro,
looking