n effort to keep still as long as his flickering
consciousness lasted. There was only one thing he was ever exacting
about--to keep her in sight. So long as he could see her he was
satisfied, and would lie for hours, patiently controlling himself for
fear of disturbing her by uttering exclamations or making other signs
of suffering; but when she had to leave him alone, he broke down and
moaned in his weakness and pain for her to come back and help him.

The doctor having declared that the north-east aspect of his attic was
all against the patient, Beth insisted on changing with him, and, as
soon as he could be moved, she, Ethel Maud Mary, and Gwendolen, with
the doctor's help, carried him into her room in a sheet; an awkward
manoeuvre because of his length, which made it hard to turn him on
the narrow landing; his weight was nothing, for he was mere skin and
bone by that time--all eyes, as Beth used to tell him.

It was Christmas Eve when they moved him, and late that night Beth kept
her vigil by him, sitting over the fire with her elbows on her knees and
her face between her hands, listening dreamily to the clang and clamour
of the church-bells, which floated up to her over the snow, mellowed by
distance and full-fraught with manifold associations. As she sat there she
pondered. She thought of the long way she had drifted from the days when
she knelt in spirit at the call of the bells and lost herself in happy
prayer. She thought of her husband's hypocrisy, and the way in which, when
it dawned upon her, her own faith had melted from her; and she pondered on
the difference it would have made if only she had been married early--just
to a good man. It would not have been necessary for her to have loved
him--not with passion--only to have relied upon him. Some one to trust,
she craved for, more than some one to love; yet she allowed that a
loveless marriage is a mock marriage. She did not regret the loss of her
conventional faith, but she wished she could join the congregation just
for the human fellowship. She felt the need of union, of some central
station, a centre of peace, unlike the church, the house of disunion.
Without knowing it, she leant to Quaker-Catholicism, the name assumed
for her religious principles by Caroline Fox--Quaker-Catholicism having
direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma.

"What are you thinking about?" Arthur Brock said suddenly from the
bed.

Beth started. She thought he was asle