“Does it seem terrible to you?” he said.  “It need not.  Will you see her?”

Elizabeth wished very strongly not; but as she hesitated how to speak, he had gently taken her hand and was leading her forward out of the room; and Elizabeth could not draw away her hand nor hinder the action of his; she let him lead her whither he would.

“Are you afraid?” he said, as he paused with his hand upon the door of the other room.  Elizabeth uttered an incomprehensible ‘no,’ and they went in.

“There is no need,” he said again in a gentle grave tone as he led her to the side of the bed and then let go her hand.  Elizabeth stood where he had placed her, like a person under a spell.

‘There was no need’ indeed, she confessed to herself, half unconsciously, for all her thoughts were in a terrible whirl.  Winnie’s face looked as though it might have been the prison of a released angel.  Nothing but its sweetness and purity was left, of all that disease and weariness had ever wrought there; the very fair and delicate skin and the clustering sunny locks seemed like angel trappings left behind.  Innocence and rest were the two prevailing expressions of the face, —­ entire, both seemed.  Elizabeth stood looking, at first awe-stricken; but presently thoughts and feelings, many and different ones, began to rise and crowd upon one another with struggling force.  She stood still and motionless, all the more.

“There is no pain in looking there?” said her companion softly.  Elizabeth’s lips formed the same unintelligible ‘no,’ which her voice failed to bring out.

“Little sleeper!” said Winthrop, combing back with his fingers the golden curls, which returned instantly to their former position, —­ “she has done her work.  She has begun upon her rest.  I have reason to thank God that ever she lived. —­ I shall see the day when I can quietly thank him that she has died.”

Elizabeth trembled, and in her heart prayed Winthrop not to say another word.

“Does not this face look, Miss Haye, as if its once owner had ‘entered into peace?’”

If worlds had depended on Elizabeth’s answering, she could not have spoken.  She could not look at the eye which, she knew, as this question was put, sought hers; her own rested only on the hand that was moving back those golden locks, and on the white brow it touched; she dared not stir.  The contact of those two, and the signification of them, was as much as she could bear, without any help.  She knew his eye was upon her.

“Isn’t it worth while,” he said, “to have such a sure foothold in that other world, that the signal for removing thither shall be a signal of peace?”

Elizabeth bowed her head low in answer.

“Have you it?” was his next question.  He had left the bed’s side and stood by hers.

Elizabeth wrung her hands and threw them apart with almost a cry, —­ “Oh I would give uncounted worlds if I had! —­”