that crushes us down? Won't that be the way? It may
be like climbing a Calvary, but all the same we shall be there--up
instead of down--and," she added, with a smile so faint that it was in
her eyes rather than on her lips, "and you know, Thor darling, that no
one is ever on a Calvary alone."

With these words she turned the handle of the door, leading him into a
room from which the morning light was only partially excluded, and about
which vases and bowls of roses had already been set.

Claude was lying naturally, wearing a suit of his own pajamas, white
with a little pink stripe, his face turned slightly and, as it were,
expectantly toward the two who approached. Having entered the room
first, Lois kept to the background, leaving Thor to go to the bedside
alone.

The difference between the dead Claude and the sleeping one was in the
expression. In the sleeping Claude the features were always as if
chiseled in marble, and, like marble, cold. The dead Claude's face, on
the contrary, radiated that which might have passed for warmth and life.
The look was one he would have worn if mystified and pleased by
something he was trying to understand. In any other case Thor would have
explained away this phenomenon on grounds purely physiological; but
since it was Claude he found himself swept by an invading wonder. He
knew what people more credulous than himself would say. They would say
that on the instant of the great change toward which he had been so
suddenly impelled even poor Claude, with his narrow earthly vision, had
been dowered with an increase of perception that bewildered and perhaps
rejoiced him. Thor couldn't say this himself; but he could wonder. Was
it possible that Claude, with this pleasing, puzzled dawn upon his face,
could have entered into phases of life more vivid than any he had left
behind? Thor found the question surging within his soul; but before he
could silence it with any of his customary answers he heard the counsel
of wise old Hervieu of the Institut Pasteur: "_Ne niez jamais rien._"

But his need was emotional and not philosophical. Stooping, he kissed
once more the lips on which there was this quiver of a new life that
almost made them move, and sank on his knees beside the bed. Lois, who
knew that beyond any subsequent moment this would be the one of last
farewell, slipped softly from the room and closed the door behind her.
She remembered as she did so that apart from her timid touch on hi