face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted
his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with
kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll,
"Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you." As I placed my
hand upon Bob's heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to
Beulah Sands's childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the
one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place
came a great mellowing sense of God's marvellous wisdom. I thought
gratefully of my mother's always ready argument that the law of all laws,
of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob's head to
sink until it rested in Beulah's lap, and from his calm and steady
breathing I could see that he had safely passed a crisis, that at least he
was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.

Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her
fingers to her lips and softly said, "Hush, my Bob's asleep." Together we
held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a
child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what
should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was
it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the
great beyond? How long we waited Bob's awakening I could not tell. The
clock's hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his
magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him
through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He
looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their
perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had
opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl's.
His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured "Beulah."