...  “I want you to show me where I am to rest and where you are to rest.”

Up they went together and softly....  He led her into his own room, but she saw his things and would not.

“This is where you belong,” she whispered.  “You will rest better here....  Please don’t dispute....  But let me be near, if you will.”

He showed her a little room that joined his own.  Falk had made it ready.

“Just the place for me....  And after you have lain down, please whistle softly.  I shall come in and read to you until you are asleep.”

“It’s like a fairy story already,” he said.

* * * * *

He closed his eyes, and the pictures took up their swift passing again.  It was not the drug, but the new thing in this life of his—­a woman’s ministering....  She came in presently, her hair loosened.  She wore one of his silk night-coats, the sleeves rolled up; and very little, she looked, in the heelless straw sandals.  She was pale.  He saw the throbbing artery in her white throat.  The polished ebon floor had a startling effect upon her black hair.

“You are like Rossetti’s Pomegranate picture,” he said, and added with a strange smile, “Do you know there is something true about you—­arrow-true?”

She sat down in the chair near him and picked up the Book.  “What shall I read?” she asked without looking up.  “It must be something that will soothe, and not make you think, except happily.”

“It’s all there....  The stately prose of Isaiah—­I love the ringing authority of it——­”

She read.  There were delicate shadings of volume, even in her lowered voice, which lent a fine natural quality to her expression.  Bedient knew the words, but he loved the mystery of this giving of hers—­her giving of peace to him....  He had obeyed her implicitly, and the morning had become very dear....  Ill and weary, all his nerves smarting with terrific fatigue, as the eyes smart before tears, and yet her ministering had made him a little boy again....  His eyelids were shut and he was happy.  It was a bewildering sense, so long had he been, and so far, from a moment like this.  His immortal heroine was close once more—­she of the answered questions and the healing arms.  So real was it, that he thought this must be death....  A sign from her made him know that it was not....  Queer, bright thoughts winged in and out of his mind.  There was a drowsy sweep to the atmosphere—­no, it was the nuances of the voice that read to him....  “When one comes to see in this life a clearer, brighter way for the conduct of the next, he has not failed.”  His mind went over this several times....  And presently he felt himself sailing through space toward one bright star.  For eternities he had sailed—­dominant, deathless—­often wavering in the zones of attraction of other worlds, but never really losing that primal impetus for his own light of the universe....  And so while she read, Bedient drifted afar, sailing on and on toward his star....