“You surely do not mean me to understand that my husband is dying?” said Ida.

“He cannot last more than a few hours, madam,” replied the doctor, with pitilessness, yet still with the humility of one who has failed in a task.

“I think we had better have another doctor at once,” said Ida.  “Irene, go down street to the telegraph operator and tell him to send a message for Dr. Lameth.”

“He has been consulted, and also Dr. Green and Dr. Anderson, not four weeks ago, and we all agree,” said the doctor, with a certain defiance.

“Go, Irene,” said Ida.

Irene went out of the room, but neither she nor the cook left the house.

“The madam said to send a telegram,” Irene told the cook, “but the doctor said it was no use, and I ain’t goin’ to stir out a step again to-night.  I’m afraid.”

The cook, who was weeping beside the kitchen table, hardly seemed to hear.  She wept profusely and muttered surreptitiously prayers on her rosary for poor Harry’s soul, which passed as day dawned.

Chapter XXVII

Maria had always attended church, and would have said, had she been asked, that she believed in religion, that she believed in God; but she had from the first, when she had thought of such matters at all, a curious sort of scorn, which was half shame, at the familiar phrases used concerning it.  When she had heard of such and such a one that “he was serious,” that he had “experienced conviction,” she had been filled with disgust.  The spiritual nature of it all was to her mind treated materially, like an attack of the measles or mumps.  She had seen people unite with the church of which her mother had been a member, and heard them subscribe to and swear their belief in articles of faith, which seemed to her monstrous.  Religion had never impressed her with any beauty, or sense of love.  Now, for the first time, after her father had died, she seemed all at once to sense the nearness of that which is beyond, and a love and longing for it, which is the most primitive and subtlest instinct of man, filled her very soul.  Her love for her father projected her consciousness of him beyond this world.  In the midst of her grief a strange peace was over her, and a realization of love which she had never had before.  Maria, at this period, had she been a Catholic, might have become a religious devotee.  She seemed to have visions of the God-man crowned with thorns, the rays of unutterable and eternal love, and sacred agony for love’s sake.  She said to herself that she loved God, that her father had gone to him.  Moreover, she took a certain delight in thinking that her own mother, with her keen tongue and her heart of true gold, had him safe with her.  She regarded Ida with a sort of covert triumph during those days after the funeral, when the sweet, sickly fragrance of the funeral flowers still permeated the house.  Maria did not weep much after the first.  She was not one to whom tears came easily after her childhood.  She carried about with her what seemed like an aching weight and sense of loss, along with that strange new conviction of love and being born for ultimate happiness which had come to her at the time of her father’s death.