far from Bertram and the mitigations he
offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight,
who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her
from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,--and bless
him.

"Tell him--I bless him,"--she said to Bertram. She could say nothing
more. There were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim,
more irrelevant. Bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "I
know you'll want to be very generous with Hugh now," and she had raised
herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words
he dictated to her.

There was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. Poor Bertram died
only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. He was not to
see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the
anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had
brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms,
the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping
of blood. Her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows--for
she was very ill--and looking out over the Autumn fields; she wept for
poor Bertram and all the pain; life was sad. But life was good and
beautiful. After the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here,
and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied
in human form. And she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few
delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and
hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her
bereavement, and of what a friend dear Bertram had been to himself.
"Some day, dear Amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and
"Your affectionate husband."

It was almost too wonderful to be borne. She had to close her eyes in
thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her
hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. He was always
in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. It
was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look
forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate
flights and hidings.

And even after the child was born, after she had seen its strange little
face, even then, though it was all her life, all her future, it held the
second place in her heart. It was her life, but it was from her husband