a love wiser, tenderer, deeper than hers.

As he thought this, he moved his hands as if to pray; but Sylvia
clenched her hold, and he lay still, praying all the same for her,
for his child, and for himself. Then he saw the sky redden with the
first flush of dawn; he heard Kester's long-drawn sigh of weariness
outside the open door.

He had seen widow Dobson pass through long before to keep the
remainder of her watch on the bed in the lean-to, which had been his
for many and many a sleepless and tearful night. Those nights were
over--he should never see that poor chamber again, though it was
scarce two feet distant. He began to lose all sense of the
comparative duration of time: it seemed as long since kind Sally
Dobson had bent over him with soft, lingering look, before going
into the humble sleeping-room--as long as it was since his boyhood,
when he stood by his mother dreaming of the life that should be his,
with the scent of the cowslips tempting him to be off to the
woodlands where they grew. Then there came a rush and an eddying
through his brain--his soul trying her wings for the long flight.
Again he was in the present: he heard the waves lapping against the
shelving shore once again.

And now his thoughts came back to Sylvia. Once more he spoke aloud,
in a strange and terrible voice, which was not his. Every sound came
with efforts that were new to him.

'My wife! Sylvie! Once more--forgive me all.'

She sprang up, she kissed his poor burnt lips; she held him in her
arms, she moaned, and said,

'Oh, wicked me! forgive me--me--Philip!'

Then he spoke, and said, 'Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive each other!' And after that the power of speech was
conquered by the coming death. He lay very still, his consciousness
fast fading away, yet coming back in throbs, so that he knew it was
Sylvia who touched his lips with cordial, and that it was Sylvia who
murmured words of love in his ear. He seemed to sleep at last, and
so he did--a kind of sleep, but the light of the red morning sun
fell on his eyes, and with one strong effort he rose up, and turned
so as once more to see his wife's pale face of misery.

'In heaven,' he cried, and a bright smile came on his face, as he
fell back on his pillow.

Not long after Hester came, the little Bella scarce awake in her
arms, with the purpose of bringing his child to see him ere yet he
passed away. Hester had watched and prayed through the livelong
night.