ul legacy of which Henry found himself the possessor
by Gerard's death. Early on that day he had remembered his promise to
his dead friend, and had found the silver box, and locked it away among
his own most sacred things. Some day, in an hour and place upon which
none might break, he would open the little box and read Helen's letters,
as Gerard had wished. Already one sentence was fixed unforgettably upon
his mind, and he said it over softly to himself as he sat by Gerard's
silent bed: "Do you believe in a love that can lie asleep, as in a
trance in this world, to awaken again in another,--a love that during
centuries of silence can still be true, and be love still in a thousand
years? If you do, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare give
you; I must love you no more in this world."

Strange dreams of the indomitable dust! Already another man's love was
growing dear to him. Already his soul said the name of "Helen" softly
for Gerard's sake.

CHAPTER XLI

LABORIOUS DAYS

With Gerard's death, Henry began to find Aunt Tipping's too sad a place
to go on living in. It had become haunted; and when new people moved
into Gerard's rooms, it became still more painful for him. It was as
though Gerard had been dispossessed and driven out. So he cast about for
some new shelter; and, one day, chance having taken him to the shipping
end of the city, he came upon some old offices which seemed full of
anxiety to be let. Inquiring of a chatty little housekeeper's wife, he
discovered, away at the echoing top of the building, a big, well-lighted
room, for which she thought the owner would be glad to take ten pounds a
year. That whole storey was deserted. Henry made up his mind at once,
and broke the news to Aunt Tipping that evening. It was the withering of
one of her few rays of poetry, and she struggled to keep him; but when
she saw how it was, the good woman insisted that he should take
something from her towards furnishing. Receiving was nothing like so
blessed as giving for Aunt Tipping. That old desk,--yes, she had bought
it for him,--that he must certainly take, and think of his old aunt
sometimes as he wrote his great books on it; and some bed-linen she
could well afford. She would take no denial.

Angel and Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a
carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to
work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still another
ha