God!_" Then he fell back fainting. They got the
wife out of the room between them--a perfect log--you could hear her
heavy breathing from the kitchen opposite. We gave him more brandy and
he came to again. He looked up in your husband's face. "_She hasn't
broke out for two months,_" he said, so piteously, "_two months--and
now--I'm done--I'm done--and she'll just go straight to the devil!_" And
it comes out, so the neighbors told us, that for two years or more
he had been patiently trying to reclaim this woman, without a word of
complaint to anybody, though his life must have been a dog's life. And
now, on his death-bed, what seemed to be breaking his heart was, not
that he was dying, but that his task was snatched from him!'

Flaxman paused, and looked away out of the window. He told his story
with difficulty.

'Your husband tried to comfort him--promised that the wife and children
should be his special case, that everything that could be done to save
and protect them should be done. And the poor little fellow looked up at
him, with the tears running down his cheeks, and--and--blessed him.
"I cared about nothing," he said, "when you came. You've been--God--to
me--I've seen Him--in you." Then he asked us to say something. Your
husband said verse after verse of the Psalms, of the Gospels, of St.
Paul. His eyes grew filmy but he seemed every now and then to struggle
back to, life, and as soon as he caught Elsmere's face his look
lightened. Toward the last he said something we none of us caught; but
your husband thought it was a line from Emily Bronte's "Hymn," which he
said to them last Sunday in lecture.'

He looked up at her interrogatively, but there was no response in her
face.

'I asked him about it,' the speaker went on, 'as we came home. He said
Grey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, and he has had a love for it
ever since.'

'Did he die while you were there?' asked Catherine presently after a
silence. Her voice was dull and quiet. He thought her a strange woman.

'No,' said Flaxman, almost sharply-'but by now, it must be over. The
last sign of consciousness was a murmur of his children's names. They
brought them in, but his hands had to be guided to them. A few minutes
after it seemed to me that he was really gone, though he still breathed.
The doctor was certain there would be no more consciousness. We stayed
nearly another hour. Then his brother came, and some other relations,
and we left him. Oh,