How could she ever bear
it? How could she ever tell Effie and the rest at home?

Many times in the day, when there was no one near, she determined to ask
the doctor, that she might know the worst or have her fears set at rest,
but she could not find the courage to do so. She did speak to the
nurse, but she knew nothing about the matter, or said she did not, and
quite laughed at her fancies, as she called them. But the fancies still
lingered, and for a week or two the face she turned to meet her friend
was grave and anxious enough.

He came almost every day now, he hardly knew why. Whatever the cause
might be, he could not but see that his coming was always hailed with
delight. Wherever the charm might be, whether in his voice or in the
words he read, he could not tell; but he saw that his visits soothed her
restlessness, and helped to banish the look of doubt and pain that too
often saddened her face.

Sometimes he read the Bible, and stranger as he had for many years been
to its sacred pages, he could not help yielding himself to the charm
which the wonderful words he read there must ever have to a thoughtful
mind. But the charm which the words had for his patient listener was
something quite different from this. It was not the grandeur or
sublimity of the style, or even the loftiness of the thought, that made
her listen with such interest. She liked the simplest passages best.
The simple narratives of the evangelists never lost their power to
please her. Some word or promise, in which he saw little beauty, had
often power to excite her deepest emotion, and he could not but wonder
as he saw it.

He read other books too--little books left by visitors; very foolish
little books he thought them often, and he could not but smile as he
marked the interest with which she listened; but he never by smile or
word intimated to her that he thought them trifling, at least he was
never conscious of doing so. But he sometimes read in the grave,
questioning eyes which Christie turned on him, a doubt whether that
which was so real and so comforting to her was of any value to him.

He could not but confess to himself that, seen from Christie's point of
view, the subjects discussed in them must seem of grave importance; and
he never lost the feeling, as he sat by her bed, that they had a meaning
to her that was hidden from him.

Very few words were spoken between them at such times. When Christie
asked a question or