and awful cry, and Morris turned to behold Mary his wife. At
last she had seen and heard, and read his naked heart. At last she knew
him--mad, and in his madness, most unfaithful--a man who loved one dead
and dragged her down to earth for company.

Look! there in his charmed and secret sight stood the spirit, and there,
over against her, the mortal woman, and he--wavering--he lost between
the two.

Certainly he had been sick a long while, since the sun-ray touched the
face of the old abbot carved in that corner of the room to support
the hammer beam. This, as he had known from a child, only chanced at
mid-summer. Mary was bending over him, but he was astonished to find
that he could sit up and move. Surely, then, his mind must have been
more ill than his body.

"Hush!" she said, "drink this, dear, and go to sleep."

It was a week after, and Morris had told her all, the kind and gentle
wife who was so good to him, who understood and could even smile as he
explained, in faltering, shame-heavy words. And he had sworn for her
sake and his children's sake, that he would put away this awful traffic,
and seek such fellowship no more.

Nor for six months did he seek it; not till the winter returned. Then,
when his body was strong again, the ravening hunger of his soul overcame
him, and, lest he should go mad or die of longing, Morris broke his
oath--as she was sure he would.

One night Mary missed her husband from her side, and creeping down
in the grey of the morning, she found him sitting in his chair in the
chapel workshop, smiling strangely, but cold and dead. Then her heart
seemed to break, for she loved him. Yet, remembering her promises,
and the dust whereof he was made, and the fate to which he had been
appointed, she forgave him all.

The search renewed, or the fruit of some fresh discovery--what he sought
or what he saw, who knows?--had killed him.

Or perhaps Stella had seemed to speak at last and the word he heard her
say was _Come!_

This, then, is the end of the story of Stella Fregelius upon earth, and
this the writing on a leaf torn from the book of three human destinies.
Remember, only one leaf.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stella Fregelius, by H. Rider Haggard

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STELLA FREGELIUS ***

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