“But the strongest of us, you know,” said Mrs. Lavender, looking hardly at the girl—­“the strongest of us will die and go into the general order of the universe; and it is a good thing for you that, as you say, you are not afraid.  Why should you be afraid?  Listen to this passage.”  She opened the red book, and guided herself to a certain page by one of a series of colored ribbons:  “’He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation.  But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being, and thou wilt not cease to live.’  Do you perceive the wisdom of that?”

“Yes,” said Sheila, and her own voice seemed hollow and strange to her in this big and dimly-lit chamber.

Mrs. Lavender turned over a few more pages, and proceeded to read again; and as she did so, in a slow, unsympathetic, monotonous voice, a spell came over the girl, the weight at her heart grew more and more intolerable, and the room seemed to grow darker:  “’Short, then, is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short, too, the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.’  You cannot do better than ask your husband to buy you a copy of this book, and give it special study.  It will comfort you in affliction, and reconcile you to whatever may happen to you.  Listen:  ’Soon will the earth cover us all; then the earth, too, will change, and the things also which result from change will continue to change for ever, and these again for ever.  For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave, and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.’  Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” said Sheila, and it seemed to her that she was being suffocated.  Would not the gray walls burst asunder and show her one glimpse of the blue sky before she sank into unconsciousness?  The monotonous tones of this old woman’s voice sounded like the repetition of a psalm over a coffin.  It was as if she was already shut out from life, and could only hear in a vague way the dismal words being chanted over her by the people in the other world.  She rose, steadied herself for a moment by placing her hand on the back of the chair, and managed to say, “Mrs. Lavender, forgive me for one moment:  I wish to speak to my husband.”  She went to the door—­Mrs. Lavender being too surprised to follow her—­and made her way down stairs.  She had seen the conservatory at the end of a certain passage.  She reached it, and then she scarcely knew any more, except that her husband caught her in his arms as she cried, “Oh, Frank, Frank, take me away from this house!  I am afraid:  it terrifies me!”