stion--some braces. So I took him up to look. We were standing
there ... standing underneath. Standing there, talking. And the floor
gave way ... cracked ... caved in on us. One machine came down...."

The voice, too, seemed to cave in. And some one was squeezing her hand,
very hard.

So nothing was wanting from the finished picture, not the last exquisite
stroke. He, the believer, had believed even in her father's floors. It
was she who had doubted, she who had asked the help that never failed.
Had he not told her not to worry?...

But if only she hadn't stopped going inside. If only her heart would
soon begin to beat again....

Chas Cooney was winking his keen eyes.

"He'd got clear--there was plenty of time.... One of the negro women was
knocked over by a flying splinter.... Things were falling all around. So
he stopped for her.... She wasn't hurt at all, when we pulled her
out.... Of course Uncle Thornton was back in it all. A beam knocked him
senseless...."

"Surgeon said it was instantaneous," came papa's shadowy voice.
"Well.... It's on my head. I'm responsible. I know that."

And he sat down uncertainly, and somewhat pitifully, on the tall
hall-chair....

Then nobody said anything more. There would never be anything more to
say. Time would go on a long while yet, but no one would ever add
another touch here. This was the end of the world.

He had trusted the Heths too far.

And how strange and void it was at the world's end, how deadly still but
for the faint roarings of waters far off.

She was walking toward her father. Through the roaring there came a
voice, so little and so remote.

"Papa, you must come up to bed.... I'll telephone for the doctor."

But she did not go to the telephone; not even to her father. She
brushed her hand upward vaguely, fending away the advancing blackness.
And then it would have been with her as with poor Miller that day at the
Works, but that Charles Cooney, who had been watching her closely, was
quick and strong.

XXXIV

In which to love much is to be much loved, and Kern's
Dearest Dream (but one) comes True.

Beyond the Great Gulf, there was news coming, too: coming with the click
of hoofs on cobble-stones, and the harsh clanging of a wagon; seeping
and spreading through the shabby street with mysterious velocity.
Windows rattled up; a word flew from lip to lip; people were running.

There came the Reverend George Dayne, of the Charit