death, as
it was now.

For the weariness came back tenfold; and he had finally to abstain from
thoughts like these, as from what caused physical pain. And then, as
before in the wretched, sleepless nights of those forced marches, he
would try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like a child
thinking over the toys it loves, one after another, that it [223] may
fall asleep thus, and forget all about them the sooner, on all the
persons he had loved in life--on his love for them, dead or living,
grateful for his love or not, rather than on theirs for him--letting
their images pass away again, or rest with him, as they would. In the
bare sense of having loved he seemed to find, even amid this foundering
of the ship, that on which his soul might "assuredly rest and depend."
One after another, he suffered those faces and voices to come and go,
as in some mechanical exercise, as he might have repeated all the
verses he knew by heart, or like the telling of beads one by one, with
many a sleepy nod between-whiles.

For there remained also, for the old earthy creature still within him,
that great blessedness of physical slumber. To sleep, to lose one's
self in sleep--that, as he had always recognised, was a good thing. And
it was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuring
voices of the people who had kept and tended him so carefully through
his sickness, now kneeling around his bed: and what he heard confirmed,
in the then perfect clearness of his soul, the inevitable suggestion of
his own bodily feelings. He had often dreamt he was condemned to die,
that the hour, with wild thoughts of escape, was arrived; and waking,
with the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had been full
of gratitude for his place there, alive still, in the [224] land of the
living. He read surely, now, in the manner, the doings, of these
people, some of whom were passing out through the doorway, where the
heavy sunlight in very deed lay, that his last morning was come, and
turned to think once more of the beloved. Often had he fancied of old
that not to die on a dark or rainy day might itself have a little
alleviating grace or favour about it. The people around his bed were
praying fervently--Abi! Abi! Anima Christiana!+ In the moments of his
extreme helplessness their mystic bread had been placed, had descended
like a snow-flake from the sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers had
applied to hands and feet, to