, and regards that of others. But you must
see him. He is your best friend, if nothing more. A woman cannot be wrong,
when she acts in that way from the inherent truth of things. That was my
mother's rule. In half an hour,"--putting her forefinger on Grey's temple,
and pursing her mouth. "Pulse low. Sharp seven the train goes. I'll bring
a bottle of nitre in my bag,"--and she bustled out.

Grey looked after her. Strong, useful, stable: how contented and happy she
had been since she was born! Love, wealth, coming to her as matters of
course. The girl looked out of the dingy window into the wearisome gray
sky. Well, what was the difference between them? What crime had _she_
committed, that God should have so set His face against her from the
first,--from the very first? She had trusted Him more than this woman whom
He seemed glad to bless. There were two or three creamy wild-lilies in a
broken glass on the sill. The girl always loved the flower, because Jesus
had touched it once: it brought her near to him, she fancied. She thought
of him now, seeing them, and put her hand to her head: remembering the
nameless agony he had chosen to bear to show her what a true life should
be; loving him with that desperate hope with which only a woman undone
clings to him upon the cross. And yet--

"It's hard," she said, turning sullenly away from the window.

Whatever the hours of this past day and night had been to her, they had
left one curious mark on her face,--a hollow sinking of the lines about
the mouth, as though years of pain had slowly crept over her. Suffering
had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great
natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak
souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract
under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin
as blind devotees, knowing but two things in eternity,--their own idea of
God, and their own salvation. Nunneries are full of them. Grey had no
vital pith of self-reliance to keep her erect, now that the storm came.
What strength she had was outside: her childlike grip on the hand of the
Man gone before.

"In half an hour." She tried to put that thought out, and look at the
chamber they had given her last night: odd enough for a woman; a
bare-floored, low-ceiled room, the upper story of the fire-engine house:
the same which they had used as a guard-house; but they had no pris