He disappeared into the inner room, and Mrs. Blaine, feeling faint from anxiety and suspense, sank exhausted into a chair.  The two girls, nervous and ill at ease, too young to grasp the full significance of the calamity that had befallen them, approached timidly.  Fanny, the elder girl, stood still, alarm and consternation written plainly on her face.  Her younger sister, bursting into a paroxysm of weeping, threw her arms round her mother’s neck.

“Oh, mother!” she sobbed.  “Surely God won’t let papa be taken from us!  I wouldn’t believe in Him any more if He couldn’t prevent that!”

Mrs. Blaine raised one hand reprovingly as with the other she caressed her daughter’s beautiful, long, dark hair.

“Hush!  Virginia, dear.  It’s wicked to talk like that.  God does everything for the best.  If it is His will, we must be resigned.”

Clasping her sobbing child to her breast, Mrs. Blaine sat in silence, her heart throbbing wildly, straining her ears to hear what was being done in the inner room, momentarily expecting to be summoned.  As she sat there, enduring mental torture, each moment seeming like an hour, she rapidly thought over the situation.  In spite of her grief, her helplessness, her brain worked lucidly enough.  She realized that her husband was dying.  Her life’s companion, the father of her children, was going away from her—­forever.  Like a lightning flash, her whole life passed suddenly in review:  She saw herself a young girl again, about Virginia’s age, and with the same fondness for gaiety and companionship.  She, too, had been fond of music, art and literature, and she was filled with ambition to make a name for herself.  One day she met John Blaine, then a young law student.  It was a case of love at first sight.  They did not stop to consider ways and means.  They got married, and to-day, after thirty years of loving companionship, her only regret was that she could not die before him.  John had been a loyal friend, a faithful companion, both in fair weather and foul, and now their life’s journey together had come to an abrupt end.  It was too dreadful to think of.  It seemed to her that all these happenings of the last few days—­this sudden sickness, the coming of the trained nurse, Dr. Everett’s grave demeanor—­was a hideous dream from which she would soon awake.

Their situation was, indeed, desperate.  It had taken practically all John’s income to live respectably.  Living expenses were high and rents exorbitant.  What made matters worse, there was practically no life insurance.  John had intended taking out more, but it had been neglected.  After the funeral and other expenses what would be left of the paltry $2,000?  They would have to find a cheaper apartment.  The girls—­she herself—­would have to find work of some kind.  It would be terribly hard on the girls.  Not only they lost a loving, devoted father, but at an age when a nice home, and comfortable surroundings meant everything in ensuring their future, they would find themselves penniless and forced to go out into a cold, unsympathetic world to earn their living.  Fanny, she knew, would not mind.  She was fond of work and had no artistic aspirations; but the blow would fall heavily on poor Virginia, who had set her heart on going to high school.