wooden bed and gazed at what was left of Laura.

"Her face had shrunk to the size of a child's; her lashes lay a
black wall on the whitest of cheeks; her hair was hanging dragged
up from her square brow in heavy folds upon the pillow. Her mouth
was tightly shut and a dark blood-stain marked her chin. After a
long silence, she moved and muttered and opened her eyes. She
fixed them on me, and my heart stopped. I stretched my hands out
towards her, and said, 'Laura!'... But the sound died; she did not
know me. I knew after that she could not live.

"People went away for the Easter Holidays: Papa to North Berwick,
Arthur Balfour to Westward Ho! and every day Godfrey Webb rode a
patient cob up to the front door, to hear that she was no better.
I sat on the stairs listening to the roar of London and the clock
in the library. The doctor--Matthews Duncan--patted my head
whenever he passed me on the stair and said, in his gentle Scotch
accent:

"'Poor little girl! Poor, poor little girl!'

"I was glad he did not say that 'while there was life there was
hope,' or any of the medical platitudes, or I would have replied
that he LIED. There was no hope--none! ...

"One afternoon I went with Lucy to St. George's, Hanover Square.
The old man was sweeping out the church; and we knelt and prayed.
Laura and I have often knelt side by side at that altar and I
never feel alone when I am in front of the mysterious Christ-
picture, with its bars of violet and bunches of grapes.