ty when Malling came into it, and the
folding-doors between it and the bedroom were shut. Ellen went away,
and Malling heard a faint murmur of voices, and then Ellen's footstep
retreating down the stairs. Silence followed. He waited, at first
standing. Then he sat down near the piano. Not a sound reached him from
the bedroom. On the curate's table lay a book. Malling took it up. The
title was "God's Will be Done." The author was a well-known high-church
divine, Father Rowton. To him, then, Henry Chichester betook himself for
comfort. The piano stood open. On it was music. Malling looked and saw,
"Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove!" by Mendelssohn. The little
room seemed full of pious orthodoxy. Surely its atmosphere was utterly
changed since Malling last was in it. The melody of "Oh, for the wings!"
went through his brain. That the Henry Chichester he had recently known,
that cruel searcher after and expounder of truth, that he should be
helped by those words, by that melody, in an hour of sorrow!

There was a movement in the bedroom. The folding-doors opened inward,
and the curate appeared. He was very pale, and looked really ill. His
face had fallen in. His fair hair was slightly disordered, and his blue
eyes were surrounded by red rims. His expression suggested that he had
recently undergone an extremely violent shock, which had shaken badly
both body and mind. He looked dazed. Coming forward feebly, he held
out his hand.

"I believe it is something important," he said in a gentle, rather
wavering voice; "otherwise--I am hardly fit, I fear, to be with my kind.
I"--He sat down--"I have had a terrible shock, Mr. Malling. You have
heard?"

"You mean Mr. Harding's death?"

"Yes."

"I have just heard of it."

"It occurred at half-past three o'clock last night, or, rather, this
morning. He had been declining for a long while. At the last he just
faded out, as it were. The strange thing is that I knew the exact moment
when he entered into rest."

"You weren't with him?"

"Oh, no. I was here, asleep. But at three o'clock I awoke. I felt
violently agitated. I can scarcely describe the sensation. It was
as if I was torn, as if mind and body, or spirit and body, were torn,
lacerated. I suffered the greatest conceivable agony. I tried to cry
out, but I could not. Nor could I move. Then everything suddenly seemed
to fail, all in a moment, and I was at peace. But it was like the peace
of death, I think. And I w