Such buoyancy appeared incompatible with the imminence of death, and one day, driven by the very human instinct to hear her optimism endorsed, she scoffed a little, tentatively, at the doctor’s verdict.

Patrick shook his head.

“No, my dear, he’s right,” he said decisively.  “But I’m not going to whine about it.  Taken all round, I’ve found life a very good sort of thing—­although”—­reflectively—­“I’ve missed the best it has to offer a man.  And probably I’ll find death a very good sort of thing, too, when it comes.”

And so Patrick Lovell went forward, his spirit erect, to meet death with the same cheerful, half-humorous courage he had opposed to the emergencies of life.

It was a few days after this, on Christmas Eve, that Sara, coming into his special den with a gay little joke on her lips and a great bunch of mistletoe in her arms, was arrested by the sudden, chill quiet of the little room.

The familiar wheeled chair was drawn up to the window, and she could see the back of Patrick’s head with its thick crop of grizzled hair, but he did not turn or speak at the sound of her entrance.

“Uncle, didn’t you hear me?  Are you asleep? . . . Uncle!” Her voice shrilled on to a sharp staccato note, then cracked and broke suddenly.

There came no movement from the chair.  The silence remained unbroken save for the ticking of a clock and the loud beating of her own heart.  The two seemed to merge into one gigantic pulse . . . deafening . . . overwhelming . . . like the surge of some immense, implacable sea.

She swayed a little, clutching at the door for support.  Then the throbbing ceased, and she was only conscious of a solitude so intense that it seemed to press about her like a tangible thing.

Swiftly, on feet of terror, she crossed the room and stood looking down at the motionless figure of her uncle.  His face was turned towards the sun, and wore an expression of complete happiness and content, as though he had just found something for which he had been searching.  He had looked like that a thousand times, when, seeking for her, he had come upon her, at last, hidden in some shady nook in the garden or swinging in her hammock.  She could almost hear the familiar “Oh, there you are, little pal!” with which he would joyously acclaim her discovery.

She lifted the hand that was resting quietly on his knee.  It lay in hers, flaccid and inert, its dreadful passivity stinging her into realization of the truth.  Patrick was dead.  And, judging from his expression, he had found death “a very good sort of thing,” just as he had expected.

For a little while Sara remained standing quietly beside the still figure in the chair.  They would never be alone together any more—­not quite like this, Patrick sitting in his accustomed place, wearing his beloved old tweeds, with an immaculate tie and with his single eyeglass—­about which she had so often chaffed him—­dangling across his chest on its black ribbon.