your tea for you. It were no fault of her'n--you beat her, and you
kicked her, and you made life awful for her; but you couldn't hurt her
this morning; she's above you now, you can't touch her now."

"Let me go, Bet--you're an awful girl--you had no call to give me a
turn like this. No, I won't touch her, and you can't force me. I'm
going out--I won't stay in this room. I'm going down to the docks--I
mustn't lose my work. What do you say--that I shan't go? Where will
you all be if I don't arn your bread for you?"

"Set down there on the side of the bed, father. I'll keep you five
minutes and no more. You needn't be all in a tremble--you needn't be
showing of the white feather. Bless you, she never could hurt you less
than she does now. Set there, and look at her face. I've a word or two
to say, and I can only say it with you looking at her dead face. Then
you can go down to the docks, and stay there for always as far as it
matters to me."

She pushed the man on to the bed. He could see the white, still face
of his dead wife. The tired look had left it; the wrinkles had almost
disappeared. Martha Granger looked twenty years younger than she had
done yesterday.

Around the closed eyelids, around the softly smiling mouth, lay an
awful peace and grandeur. The drunken husband looked at the wife whom
he had abused, whose days he had rendered one long misery, and a lump
arose in his throat; a queer new sensation, which he could not recognize
as either remorse or repentance, filled his breast. He no longer opposed
Bet; he gazed fixedly, with a stricken stare, at the dead woman.