Then it came to her that he had asked for no caress.  He was going unassoiled to his God, with the divine indifference of the dying.  Only his imagination looked backward and forward.  And she thought, “It is a little light flame that I have lit with my own taper that has gone out—­that has gone out—­and presently the grave will extinguish that.”  She sat quiet and sombre in the growing darkness, and presently Arnold slept.

He slept through the bringing of a lamp, the arrival of flowers, subdued knocks of inquirers who would not be stayed by the bulletin—­the visit of Surgeon-Major Wills, who felt his pulse without wakening him.  “Holding out wonderfully,” the doctor said.  “Don’t rouse him for the soup.  He’ll go out in about six hours without any pain.  May not wake at all.”

The door opened again to admit the probationer come to relieve Miss Howe.  Hilda beckoned her into the corridor.  “You can go back,” she said, “I will take your turn.”

“But the Mother Superior—­you know how particular about the rules—­”

“Say nothing about it.  Go to bed.  I am not coming.”

“Then, Miss Howe, I shall be obliged to report it.”

“Report and be—­report if you like.  There is nothing for you to do here to-night,” and Hilda softly closed the door.  There was a whispered expostulation when Sister Margaret came back, but Miss Howe said, “It is arranged,” and with a little silent nod of appreciation the Sister settled into her chair, her finger marking a place in the Church Service.  Hilda sat nearer to the bed, her elbow on the table, shading her eyes from the lamp, and watched.

“Is it not odd,” whispered Sister Margaret, as the night wore on, “he has refused to be confessed before he goes?  He will not see the Brother Superior—­or any of them.  Strange, is it not?”

Together they watched the quick short breathing.  It seemed strangely impossible to sleep against such odds.  They saw the lines of the face grow sharper and whiter, the dark eye-sockets sink to a curious roundness, a greyness gather about the mouth.  There were times when they looked at each other in the last surmise.  Yet the feeble pulse persisted—­persisted.

“I believe now,” said Sister Margaret, “that he may go on like this until the morning.  I am going to take half an hour’s nap.  Rouse me at once if he wakes,” and she took an attitude of casual repose, turning the Prayer-book open on her knee for readier use, open at “Prayers for the Dying.”

The jackals had wailed themselves out, and there was a long, dark period when nothing but the sudden cry of a night bird in the hospital garden came between Hilda and the very vivid perception she had at that hour of the value and significance of the earthly lot.  She lifted her head and listened to that, it seemed a comment.  Suddenly, then, a harsh quarrelling of dogs—­Christian dogs—­arose in the distance and died away, and again there was