erous surrender, and lay down its life because life
itself demanded it!

Then she went to her own room.

* * * * *

The clocks were chiming three, and the grey dawn lay on the walls, when
she awoke to find by her bed the woman who had sat with the old lady.

"Come at once, madam; Mrs. Brand is dying."

IV

Oliver was with them by six o'clock; he came straight up into his
mother's room to find that all was over.

The room was full of the morning light and the clean air, and a bubble
of bird-music poured in from the lawn. But his wife knelt by the bed,
still holding the wrinkled hands of the old woman, her face buried in
her arms. The face of his mother was quieter than he had ever seen it,
the lines showed only like the faintest shadows on an alabaster mask;
her lips were set in a smile. He looked for a moment, waiting until the
spasm that caught his throat had died again. Then he put his hand on his
wife's shoulder.

"When?" he said.

Mabel lifted her face.

"Oh! Oliver," she murmured. "It was an hour ago. ... Look at this."

She released the dead hands and showed the rosary still twisted there;
it had snapped in the last struggle, and a brown bead lay beneath the
fingers.

"I did what I could," sobbed Mabel. "I was not hard with her. But she
would not listen. She kept on crying out for the priest as long as she
could speak."

"My dear ... " began the man. Then he, too, went down on his knees by
his wife, leaned forward and kissed the rosary, while tears blinded him.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Leave her in peace. I would not move it for the
world: it was her toy, was it not?"

The girl stared at him, astonished.

"We can be generous, too," he said. "We have all the world at last. And
she--she has lost nothing: it was too late."

"I did what I could."

"Yes, my darling, and you were right. But she was too old; she could not
understand."

He paused.

"Euthanasia?" he whispered with something very like tenderness.

She nodded.

"Yes," she said; "just as the last agony began. She resisted, but I knew
you would wish it."

They talked together for an hour in the garden before Oliver went to his
room; and he began to tell her presently of all that had passed.

"He has refused," he said. "We offered to create an office for Him; He
was to have been called Consultor, and he refused it two hours ago. But
He has promised to be at our service.... No, I must not tell you where
He is.... He will ret