ut no sign
of weakness, and her soft voice as she said, "Wait for me
here"--restrained me. I pressed her fingers to my lips and as I saw her
go out, I felt that perhaps never would the opportunity to tell the
story I have told to-night come again.

CHAPTER V

AT DAWN

I think it must have been nearly a half-hour--though the minutes were
themselves hours--before I, waiting in the upper hall beside the window,
through which the arc lights from the street threw jumping white patches
on the ceiling, heard the sound of the old dog's claws on the floor
below and her little catches of breath as she came up.

At the top she buried her face for a moment on my shoulder.

"I love you more than ever," she whispered. "I want you to stay.--Call
Margaret and do what you can. I will come to you by and by."

With these words she pressed my forearm in the grip of her strong
fingers and, entering her own room, shut the door.

I found, when I did mechanically as she had bade me do, that Margaret,
with the instinct of an old servant, which is sometimes as keen as that
of an animal, had already sensed the presence of some crisis and prowled
about in her soft-footed way until she had discovered the truth. She was
lying at the bottom of the stairs, her face buried in her hands and her
broad back rising and falling with slow and silent tides of grief.
Julianna and her father were together the old woman's life. One half had
gone.

"Come, Margaret," said I softly.

"Very well, sir," she answered after a minute, and rising, straightened
her cap, preparing for duty like a broken-hearted soldier. And so she
went on in that next hour or two, telephoning, directing, arranging and
doing with me all those necessary things. In spite of her labors she
seemed always to be at my elbow, a ceaseless little whimpering in her
throat. Her spectacles were befogged with the mist from her old blue
eyes, which, like the color of old china, had faded with wetting and
drying in years of family use, but she did not again give up to her
grief.

Therefore, when at last we looked at each other in the hall in one of
those moments when, at the end of a task, a mental inventory is taken to
be sure that all is done, I was surprised to see her expression change
suddenly, to hear a cry of dismay escape her, and to observe her trundle
herself toward the library door in grotesque haste.

When, fo