ger with a gesture commanding silence.

Suddenly a voice rang out, clear and peremptory. "Please ask Miss
Harford to come here. Where is Goody? She will understand."

Then she ran forward, her hand on Philippa's arm, through the
connecting door into the inner room. A strong pungent smell of
restoratives filled the air. The figure on the bed was sitting
upright, motioning to one side the nurse and an elderly man, presumably
the doctor, who were trying in vain to soothe him. The next moment his
strength failed--he fell backward on the pillows, and his face assumed
a livid death-like hue.

"Too late! too late!" murmured Mrs. Goodman in a tone of anguish.

The doctor, who had been occupied in his attentions on the invalid,
glanced up and met Philippa's eyes. He recoiled as if in surprise or
horror, but in an instant his professional calm reasserted itself.

No sound broke the stillness of the room except the laboured breathing
of the poor old woman. Philippa gazed at the still white face,
perfectly still, perfectly white, and apparently lifeless. The nurse
raised herself with a sigh which seemed to intimate that all further
effort was useless.

The slow minutes passed, and with each moment a greyer shadow crept
like a veil over the face of the dying man.

Suddenly Mrs. Goodman spoke, sharply, and in a voice that sounded
strident in the silence.

"Speak to him! call him!" she said.

A clutch of emotion strangled Philippa; her one conscious feeling was
pity--pity overwhelming and profound. Pity for the soul going out into
the Great Unknown, lonely, unsatisfied, craving something which it
seemed that only she could supply. She fell on her knees beside the
bed, and laid her warm hands on the frail white ones which were growing
cold, so cold.

She felt some one remove her hat, and then again came the prompting
insistent voice at her elbow.

"Call him! _Call him!_----Francis!"

And then she called--all her sorrow for the sick and suffering, all her
potential motherhood ringing in her young voice.

"Francis!" Then louder, "Francis! Can you hear me? Francis! It is
Philippa!" Again the breathless silence. Then, intent only on the
task of gaining a response, she slipped her arm under the pillow, and
leaning her face closer and closer, she called again and again. Did an
eyelid flicker? Was it imagination, or was the deathly pallor changing
slightly? Were the shadows round the drawn mouth less dark?