“George would not wish me to pretend I believe—­he would want me to be honest.  If I’m not honest, I shan’t deserve that he should live.  I don’t believe, and I can’t pray.”

“My darling, you’re overtired.”

“No, Dad.”  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her hands round her knees, looked straight before her.  “We can only help ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel.”

Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would touch her just then.  The sick man’s face was hardly visible now in the twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood looking down at him a long time.

“Go and rest, Dad; the doctor’s coming again at eleven.  I’ll call you if I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him.”

Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be the greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow little room he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots, walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness.  Both his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them!  It was as if Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt confused, helpless, bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God’s side, whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this thought, he stood still at the open window.

Earthly love—­heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?

From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered; and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder. 3

George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid constitution, and—­Scotsman on his father’s side—­a fighting character.  He came back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were:  “I’ve been hanging over the edge, Gracie!”

A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced rum sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real life.  With the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this was what it was for all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years!  Mercifully, at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If he had been able to take in the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at her face, touching her for the last time—­it would have been hell; if he had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world’s life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on—­it would have meant the most poignant anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake