ring.
They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life pass before them.
Perhaps she had seen hers. Perhaps she had trodden the old road that he
was travelling over now. Only her vision of it would be different. It
was James Stonehouse and Robert's mother that she would see--radiant
figures of wonderful, unlucky people--and little Robert, who belonged to
both of them, tagging in the rear.
But he saw her--Christine lying white and still under the great mahogany
side-board, Christine coming back day after day in gallant patience to
scrub the floors and his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns,
and do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stonehouse menage on
its feet.
She had held him close to her and comforted him.
Her splendid faithfulness.
He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and smoothed her dress
and folded her hands over her breast. Her bag, which he had gathered up
with her rolled on to the floor. A book fell out. He picked it up
mechanically. It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written:
"From JIM and CONSTANCE
to their friend, CHRISTINE."
The writing was his father's. It had faded, but one could still see how
regular and beautiful it was. Then the date. His own birthday--the
first of all the unfortunate birthdays.
He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing. Then suddenly
he saw it--in a new light. Ricardo. How frightfully--excruciatingly
funny. Ricardo. He felt that he was going to laugh--shout with
laughter. It was horrible. Laughter rising and falling---like a sort of
awful sickness--choking him.
Instead his heart broke. He flung himself down beside her and pressed
his face against her cold, thin cheek. And, instead of laughter, sobs
that tore him to pieces--and at last, in mercy, tears.
"Oh, Christine, Christine--my own darling! I did love you--I never told
you--you never, never knew how much!"
The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse.
7
So there was no one but Francey now.
He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he hoped for anything. He
turned to her instinctively. And when the door of the ward opened he
did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had
followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her.
If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have
remembered the boy of whom she had been fond--a small, quee
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