her, she sang in a
somewhat hoarse voice. She talked, too, now, without cessation; but with
the exception of that hymn about Paradise there was nothing in her words
which indicated that she remembered anything that had occupied her
thoughts in her moments of consciousness. All was now happiness and
laughter once more. Toward morning she slept; but she woke very soon,
and at once the unspeakable pain she had had before came over her, but
at the same time came also the death-struggle. Amid this she became
aware that the beds of the boys were not near hers. She looked at Atlung
and opened her hand, as if she would clasp his. He understood that she
thought the boys had gone on before and wanted to console him. With this
cold little hand in his, and with its gentle pressure through the
struggle with the last message from this receding life, he sat until the
end came.

But then, too, he gave way wholly to his boundless grief. The
responsibility he felt for not having attempted to draw her into his own
vigorous reading and thought; for having left her to live a weak
dream-life; to bear the burden of the housekeeping and the bringing up
of the children, but not in community of spirit and will, partly out of
consideration for her, partly from a careless desire to leave her as she
was when he took her; for having amused himself with her when it struck
his fancy to do so, but not having made an effort to work in the same
direction with her,--this was what tormented his mind and could find no
consolation, no answer, no forgiveness.

Not until the following night when he was wandering about out of doors,
beneath a bright starlit sky, came the first soothing thoughts. Would
she under any circumstances have forsaken the ideas of her childhood to
follow his? Were not they an inheritance, so deeply rooted in her nature
that an attempt to alter them would only have made her unhappy? This he
had always believed, and it was this which ultimately determined him to
live _his_ life while she lived hers. The image of his beautiful darling
hovered about him, and the two boys always accompanied her. Whether it
was because of his own weariness, or whether his self-reproaches had
exhausted themselves and let things speak their own natural
language--his guilt toward her and toward them was shifted slightly and
spread over many other matters, which were painful enough; but not as
these were.

What these matters were, he did not tell me; but he lo