All this Hodder performed mechanically.  Not until he was returning—­not, indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the banister on the stairs.  The thought that shook him now was of the cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on which he had stumbled was but one insignificant incident.  But he went on into Mrs. Breitmann’s room, and saw Mr. Bentley still seated where he had left him.  The old gentleman looked up at him.

“Mrs. Breitmann and I are agreed, Mr. Hodder, that Mrs. Garvin ought not to remain in there.  What do you think?”

“By all means, no,” said the rector.

The German woman burst into a soliloquy of sympathy that became incoherent.

“She will not leave him,—­nein—­she will not come. . . .”

They went, the three of them, to the doorway of the death chamber and stood gazing at the huddled figure of the woman by the bedside.  She had ceased to cry out:  she was as one grown numb under torture; occasionally a convulsive shudder shook her.  But when Mrs. Breitmann touched her, spoke to her, her grief awoke again in all its violence, and it was more by force than persuasion that she was finally removed.  Mrs. Breitmann held one arm, Mr. Bentley another, and between them they fairly carried her out, for she was frail indeed.

As for Hodder, something held him back—­some dread that he could not at once define.  And while he groped for it, he stood staring at the man on the bed, for the hand of love had drawn back the sheet from the face.  The battle was over of this poor weakling against the world; the torments of haunting fear and hate, of drink and despair had triumphed.  The sight of the little group of toys brought up the image of the home in Alder Street as the wife had pictured it.  Was it possible that this man, who had gone alone to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his fellow-men—­in Eldon Parr?  Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that evening of rain and thunder in the boy’s room at the top of the great horse in Park Street.  He had pitied Eldon Parr then.  Did he now?

He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face with the sheet.

Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,—­he had to face the woman!  He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church.  What should he say, now?  In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside the window and buried his face in his hands.  The sight of poor Garvin’s white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and