Nataly resumed her seat.  Mrs. Burman had raised her head.  She said:  ’We are at peace.’  She presently said, with effort:  ’It cannot last with me.  I die in nature’s way.  I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may have it above.  I give it here, to you, to all.  My soul is cleansed, I trust.  Much was to say.  My strength will not.  Unto God, you both!’

The Rev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered step to the back of the sofa.  Nataly dropped before the unseeing, scarce breathing, lady for an instant.  Victor murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared the ceremonial shake of hands.  He turned away, then turned back, praying for power to speak, to say that he had found his heart, was grateful, would hold her in memory.  He fell on a knee before her, and forgot he had done so when he had risen.  They were conducted by the Rev. gentleman to the hall-door:  he was not speechless.  Jarniman uttered something.

That black door closed behind them.

CHAPTER XLI

THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH

To a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had voice, London may be restorative as air of Summer Alps.  It is by contrast blooming life.  Observe the fellowship of the houses shoulder to shoulder; and that straight ascending smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the good policeman yonder, blessedly idle on an orderly Sabbath evening; and the families of the minor people trotting homeward from the park to tea; here and again an amiable carriage of the superimposed people driving to pay visits; they are so social, friendly, inviting to him; they strip him of the shroud, sing of the sweet old world.  He cannot but be moved to the extremity of the charitableness neighbouring on tears.

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, echo of the fact still shouting in his breast, that he had seen Mrs. Burman, and that the interview was over—­the leaf turned and the book shut held Victor in a silence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the more human burst of gratitude to the dying woman, who had spared him, as much as she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not called on him for any utterance of penitence.  That worm-like thread of voice came up to him still from sexton-depths:  it sounded a larger forgiveness without the word.  He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told Nataly; at the same time bidding her smell ‘the marvellous oxygen of the park.’  He declared it to be quite equal to Lakelands.

She slightly pressed his arm for answer.  Perhaps she did not feel so deeply?  She was free of the horrid associations with the scent of Marechale.  At any rate, she had comported herself admirably!