beautiful since
suffering gave it the final touch, had thrilled her only yesterday and
through a succession of yesterdays. It had no power to thrill her now.
She tried to put back this unworthy thought, but it persisted. In
spite of pity and all decency of the heart, that outer self of hers
kept saying it to her like an audible voice. Were he to die now, in
her arms, she should work and weep and pray over his passing--but only
as she would work and weep and pray over that alien old man who lay
beside him, that woman whom they had just carried away.

The Judge was flagging. He glanced wearily over his shoulder, as
though he hesitated to ask for relief. She rose; and without a word
she took his place. And now, as she knelt with Bertram's slight yet
heavy breathing in her ear, her thoughts became uncontrollable
nightmare--scattered visions and memories of old horrors, as when she
saw her father drunk on the pavement; a multitude of those little
shames which linger so long. One incident which was not quite a shame
thrust itself forward most insistently of all. It was that episode
under the bay tree, when she was only a little girl. Why did that
memory start to the surface those tears which had been falling so long
within? Her weeping seemed to lift her to a tremendous height of
perception, as though that outer self had flowed in upon her.

That which had lured her and dragged her to him in the end, was the
life in him, the strong, vigorous body, the gestures, the smiles. That
which had held her away from him was the soul within him--high and
clean enough as souls go, but not one which she could ever know, and
not one which could ever know hers. In this struggle of passing, he
was all soul; the body was not in it.

She held the plan of her puzzle; it was necessary only to set the
scattered blocks into place.

She found herself whispering to him; she checked herself until she
remembered that he could not hear:

"O Bertram, you are not mine! O Bertram, you could never be mine!"

Now she could look straight at the possibility of his death or
recovery. And she could weigh and choose, in case it was life, between
telling him what she felt, or going on with him to the end--walking
with a soul apart, yet choosing paths for it, too. That last might be
the road of honor. That fine and heroic course, indeed, came to her
with a high appeal. She had made her one resolve of duty. Perhaps it
was her destiny to immolate herself for