night and silence.  Night for hours.  Time for reflection, alone with death and the lamp, upon the year that had been very valuable.  “I would have married you,” she whispered.  “Yes, I would.”  Later her lips moved again.  “I would have taken the consequence;” and again, “I would have paid any penalty.”  There he lay, a burden that she would never bear, a burden that would be gone in the morning.  There were moments when she cried out on Fate for doing her this kindness.

The long singing drone of a steamer’s signal came across the city from the river, once, twice, thrice; and presently the sparrows began their twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away.  A conservancy cart lumbered past creaking; the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory cut the air from Howrah; the first solitary foot smote through the dawn upon the pavement.  The light showed grey beyond the scanty curtains.  A noise of something being moved reverberated in the hospital below, and Arnold opened his eyes.  They made him in a manner himself again, and he fixed them upon Hilda as if they could never alter.  She leaned nearer him and made a sign of inquiry toward the sleeping Sister, with the farewells, the commendations of poor mortality speeding itself forth, lying upon her lap.  Arnold comprehended, and she was amazed to see the mask of his face charge itself with a faint smile as he shook his head.  He made a little movement; she saw what he wanted and took his hand in hers.  The smile was still in his eyes as he looked at her, and then at the cheated Sister.  “I would have married you,” she whispered passionately as if that could stay him.  “Yes, I would.”

So in the end he trusted the new wings of his mortal love to bear his soul to its immortality.  They carried their burden buoyantly, it was such a little way.  The lamp was still holding its own against the paleness from the windows when the meaning finally went out of his clasp of Hilda’s hand, without a struggle to stay, and she saw that in an instant when she was not looking, he had closed his eyes upon the world.  She sat on beside him for a long time after that, watching tenderly, and would not withdraw her hand—­it seemed an abandonment.

Three hours later Miss Howe, passing out of the hospital gate, was overtaken by Duff Lindsay, riding, with a look of singular animation and vigour.  He flung himself off his horse to speak to her, and as he approached he drew from his inner coat pocket the brown envelope of a telegram.

“Good-morning,” he said.  “You do look fagged.  I have a—­curious—­ piece of news.”

“Alicia told me that you were starting early this morning for Madras!”

“I should have been, but for this.”

“Read it to me,” Hilda said, “I’m tired.”

“Oh, do you very much mind?  I would rather—­”

She took the missive; it was dated the day before, Colombo, and read—­