“Certainly, Juliet—­please God, I will.”

“Then promise me, if I can’t get through—­if I am going to die, that you will bring him to me.  I must see my Paul once again before the darkness.”

“Wouldn’t that be rather unkind—­rather selfish?” returned Dorothy.

She had been growing more and more pitiful of Paul.

Juliet burst into tears, called Dorothy cruel, said she meant to kill her.  How was she to face it but in the hope of death? and how was she to face death but in the hope of seeing Paul once again for the last time?  She was certain she was going to die; she knew it! and if Dorothy would not promise, she was not going to wait for such a death!

“But there will be a doctor,” said Dorothy, “and how am I——­”

Juliet interrupted her—­not with tears but words of indignation:  Did Dorothy dare imagine she would allow any man but her Paul to come near her?  Did she?  Could she?  What did she think of her?  But of course she was prejudiced against her!  It was too cruel!

The moment she could get in a word, Dorothy begged her to say what she wished.

“You do not imagine, Juliet,” she said, “that I could take such a responsibility on myself!”

“I have thought it all over,” answered Juliet.  “There are women properly qualified, and you must find one.  When she says I am dying,—­when she gets frightened, you will send for my husband?  Promise me.”

“Juliet, I will,” answered Dorothy, and Juliet was satisfied.

But notwithstanding her behavior’s continuing so much the same, a change, undivined by herself as well as unsuspected by her friend, had begun to pass upon Juliet.  Every change must begin further back than the observation of man can reach—­in regions, probably, of which we have no knowledge.  To the eyes of his own wife, a man may seem in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, when “larger, other eyes than ours” may be watching with delight the germ of righteousness swell within the inclosing husk of evil.  Sooner might the man of science detect the first moment of actinic impact, and the simultaneously following change in the hitherto slumbering acorn, than the watcher of humanity make himself aware of the first movement of repentance.  The influences now for some time operative upon her, were the more powerful that she neither suspected nor could avoid them.  She had a vague notion that she was kind to her host and hostess; that she was patronizing them; that her friend Dorothy, with whom she would afterwards arrange the matter, filled their hands for her use; that, in fact, they derived benefit from her presence;—­and surely they did, although not as she supposed.  The only benefits they reaped were invaluable ones—­such as spring from love and righteousness and neighborhood.  She little thought how she interfered with the simple pleasures and comforts of the two; how many a visit of friends, whose talk was a holy revelry of thought