Robert himself
writing, to stay where she was.

The morning after the interview with Edmondson, Robert sent for Murray
Edwardes. They were closeted together for nearly an hour. Edwardes came
out with the look of one who has been lifted into 'heavenly places.'

'I thank God,' he said to Catherine, with deep emotion, 'that I ever
knew him. I pray that I may be found worthy to carry out my pledges to
him.'

When Catherine went into the study she found Robert gazing into the fire
with dreamy eyes. He started and looked up to her with a smile.

'Murray Edwardes has promised himself heart and soul to the work. If
necessary, he will give up his chapel to carry it on. But we hope it
will be possible to work them together. What a brick he is! What
a blessed chance it was that took me to that breakfast party at
Flaxman's!'

The rest of the time before departure he spent almost entirely in
consultation and arrangement with Edwardes. It was terrible how rapidly
worse he seemed to grow directly the situation had declared itself, and
the determination _not_ to be ill had been perforce overthrown. But his
struggle against breathlessness and weakness, and all the other symptoms
of his state during these last days, was heroic. On the last day of
all, by his own persistent wish, a certain number of members of the
Brotherhood came to say good-by to him. They came in one by one,
Macdonald first. The old Scotchman, from the height of his sixty years
of tough weather-beaten manhood, looked down on Robert with a fatherly
concern.

'Eh, Mister Elsmere, but it's a fine place yur gawin' tu, they say.
Ye'll do weel there, sir--ye'll do weel. And as for the wark, sir, we'll
keep it oop-we'll not lot the Deil mak' hay o' it, if we knaws it--the
auld leer!' he added with a phraseology which did more honor to the
Calvinism of his blood than the philosophy of his training.

Lestrange came in, with a pale sharp face, and said little in his ten
minutes. But Robert divined in him a sort of repressed curiosity and
excitement akin to that of Voltaire turning his feverish eyes toward _le
grand secret_. 'You, who preached to us that consciousness, and God,
and the soul are the only realities--are you so sure of it now you are
dying, as you were in health? Are your courage, your certainty, what
they were?' These were the sort of questions that seemed to underlie the
man's spoken words.

There was something trying in it, but Robert did his best to p