I listened, as one of the many ignorant persons alluded to by Lord Loring.  It was with difficulty that I fixed my attention on what he was saying.  My thoughts wandered to Stella and to the dying man.  I looked at the clock.

Lady Loring evidently shared the feeling of suspense that had got possession of me.  She rose and walked to the window.

“Here is the message!” she said, recognizing her traveling servant as he entered the hotel door.

The man appeared, with a line written on a card.  I was requested to present the card at the Embassy, without delay.

May 4.—­I am only now able to continue my record of the events of yesterday.

A silent servant received me at the Embassy, looked at the card, and led the way to an upper floor of the house.  Arrived at the end of a long passage, he opened a door, and retired.

As I crossed the threshold Stella met me.  She took both my hands in hers and looked at me in silence.  All that was true and good and noble expressed itself in that look.

The interval passed, and she spoke—­very sadly, very quietly.

“One more work of mercy, Bernard.  Help him to die with a heart at rest.”

She drew back—­and I approached him.

He reclined, propped up with pillows, in a large easy-chair; it was the one position in which he could still breathe with freedom.  The ashy shades of death were on his wasted face.  In the eyes alone, as they slowly turned on me, there still glimmered the waning light of life.  One of his arms hung down over the chair; the other was clasped round his child, sitting on his knee.  The boy looked at me wonderingly, as I stood by his father.  Romayne signed to me to stoop, so that I might hear him.

“Penrose?” he asked, faintly whispering.  “Dear Arthur!  Not dying, like me?”

I quieted that anxiety.  For a moment there was even the shadow of a smile on his face, as I told him of the effort that Penrose had vainly made to be the companion of my journey.  He asked me, by another gesture, to bend my ear to him once more.

“My last grateful blessing to Penrose.  And to you.  May I not say it?  You have saved Arthur”—­his eyes turned toward Stella—­“you have been her best friend.”  He paused to recover his feeble breath; looking round the large room, without a creature in it but ourselves.  Once more the melancholy shadow of a smile passed over his face—­and vanished.  I listened, nearer to him still.

“Christ took a child on His knee.  The priests call themselves ministers of Christ.  They have left me, because of this child, here on my knee.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Winterfield, Death is a great teacher.  I know how I have erred—­what I have lost.  Wife and child.  How poor and barren all the rest of it looks now!”

He was silent for a while.  Was he thinking?  No:  he seemed to be listening—­and yet there was no sound in the room.  Stella, anxiously watching him, saw the listening expression as I did.  Her face showed anxiety, but no surprise.