You are better in here taking care of your daughters. If you are
needed I'll call you."

He disappeared into the inner room, and Mrs. Blaine, feeling faint
from anxiety and suspense, sank exhausted into a chair. The two girls,
nervous and ill at ease, too young to grasp the full significance of
the calamity that had befallen them, approached timidly. Fanny, the
elder girl, stood still, alarm and consternation written plainly on
her face. Her younger sister, bursting into a paroxysm of weeping,
threw her arms round her mother's neck.

"Oh, mother!" she sobbed. "Surely God won't let papa be taken from us!
I wouldn't believe in Him any more if He couldn't prevent that!"

Mrs. Blaine raised one hand reprovingly as with the other she caressed
her daughter's beautiful, long, dark hair.

"Hush! Virginia, dear. It's wicked to talk like that. God does
everything for the best. If it is His will, we must be resigned."

Clasping her sobbing child to her breast, Mrs. Blaine sat in silence,
her heart throbbing wildly, straining her ears to hear what was being
done in the inner room, momentarily expecting to be summoned. As she
sat there, enduring mental torture, each moment seeming like an hour,
she rapidly thought over the situation. In spite of her grief, her
helplessness, her brain worked lucidly enough. She realized that her
husband was dying. Her life's companion, the father of her children,
was going away from her--forever. Like a lightning flash, her whole
life passed suddenly in review: She saw herself a young girl again,
about Virginia's age, and with the same fondness for gaiety and