... Her way is parted from my way;
Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?

DANTE ROSSETTI.

Ruth was much worse in the evening, but at last, after Cecil had
watched at her side till a late hour, she sank into a troubled sleep.
Then the old Indian servant insisted on taking his place at the
sufferer's bedside, for she saw that he was much worn by the labors of
the day and by anxiety for his wife. At first he refused; but she was
a skilled nurse, and he knew that the invalid would fare better in her
hands than his own, so at last he consented on condition that she
would call him if his wife grew worse. The woman promised, and he
withdrew into the library, where a temporary bed had been made for
him. At the door he turned and looked back.

His wife lay with closed eyes and flushed face amid the white pillows.
The robe over her breast stirred with her difficult breathing, and her
head turned now and then from side to side while she uttered broken,
feverish words. By her sat the swarthy nurse, watching her every
movement and ready with observant eye and gentle touch to minister to
all her needs.

A yearning tenderness and pity came into his gaze. "Poor child, poor
child!" he thought. "If I could only make her well and happy! If I
could only bring her dead lover back to life, how gladly would I put
her in his arms and go away forever!" And it seemed to him in some dim
way that he had wronged the poor sufferer; that he was to blame for
her sorrow.

He went on into the library. A lamp was burning on the table; a Hebrew
Bible and a copy of Homer lay beside it. Along the walls were arranged
those heavy and ponderous tomes in which the theology of the age was
wont to clothe itself.

He seated himself at the table and took up his Homer; for he was too
agitated to sleep. But it was in vain that he tried to interest
himself in it. The rhythm had lost its music, the thought its power;
it was in vain that he tried to forget himself in the reply of
Achilles, or the struggle over the body of Patroclus.

Hawthorne tells us that a person of artistic temperament may at a time
of mental depression wander through the Roman galleries and see
nothing in the finest masterpieces of Raphael or Angelo. The grace is
gone from the picture, the inspiration from the marble; the one is a
meaningless collection of colors, the other a dull effigy carved in
stone.