-the skimmer of
many books--remembered how Renan--_sain et sauf_--had sent a challenge
to his own end, and defying the possible weakness of age and sickness,
had demanded to be judged by the convictions of life, and not by the
terrors of death. She tried to fortify her own mind by the recollection.

* * * * *

The first days of June broke radiantly over the great gorge and the
woods which surround it. One morning, early, between four and five
o'clock, Daphne came in, to find Madeleine awake and comparatively at
ease. Yet the preceding twenty-four hours had been terrible, and her
nurses knew that the end could not be far off.

The invalid had just asked that her couch might be drawn as near to the
window as possible, and she lay looking towards the dawn, which rose in
fresh and windless beauty over the town opposite and the white splendour
of the Falls. The American Fall was still largely in shadow; but the
light struck on the fresh green of Goat Island and leaped in tongues of
fire along the edge of the Horseshoe, turning the rapids above it to
flame and sending shafts into the vast tower of spray that holds the
centre of the curve. Nature was all youth, glitter and delight; summer
was rushing on the gorge; the mingling of wood and water was at its
richest and noblest.

Madeleine turned her face towards the gorge, her wasted hands clasped on
her breast. She beckoned Daphne with a smile, and Daphne knelt down
beside her.

"The water!" said the whispering voice; "it was once so terrible. I am
not afraid--now."

"No, darling. Why should you be?"

"I know now, I shall see him again."

Daphne was silent.

"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now--I am
certain."

"Since you became a Catholic?"

She made a sign of assent.

"I couldn't be uncertain--I _couldn't_!" she added with fervour, looking
strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive
or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well
provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the
spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.

A little later Madeleine drew her down again.

"I couldn't talk, Daphne--I was afraid; but I've written to you, just
bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne----!"

Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her
friend for a little, and then closed.

She lingered through t