"Yes, I am coming ... Jesus," she murmured. Then her hands dropped heavily upon her breast; the face grew rigid, the eyes closed. Involuntarily the minister seized the hand nearest him. He felt it respond faintly to his clasp in unconsciousness of the pagan pollution of his touch. He read on, "Thou who art the Father of the fatherless and the Judge of the widow, protect my beloved kindred with whose soul my own is knit."
The lips still echoed him almost imperceptibly, the departing spirit lulled into peace by the prayer of the unbeliever. "Into Thy hand I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Amen and Amen."
And in that last Amen, with a final gleam of blessedness flitting across her sightless face, the poor Christian toiler breathed out her life of pain, holding the Jew's hand. There was a moment of solemn silence, the three men becoming as the little children in the presence of the eternal mystery.
It leaked out, as everything did in that gossipy town, and among that gossipy Jewish congregation. To the minister's relief, his flock took it better than he expected.
"What a blessed privilege for that heathen female!" was all their comment.
The Memory Clearing House.
When I moved into better quarters on the strength of the success of my first novel, I little dreamt that I was about to be the innocent instrument of a new epoch in telepathy. My poor Geraldine—but I must be calm; it would be madness to let them suspect I am insane. No, these last words must be final. I cannot afford to have them discredited. I cannot afford any luxuries now.
Would to Heaven I had never written that first novel! Then I might still have been a poor, unhappy, struggling, realistic novelist; I might still have been residing at 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras. But I do not blame Providence. I knew the book was conventional even before it succeeded. My only consolation is that Geraldine was part-author of my misfortunes, if not of my novel. She it was who urged me to abandon my high ideals, to marry her, and live happily ever afterwards. She said if I wrote only one bad book it would be enough to establish my reputation; that I could then command my own terms for the good ones. I fell in with her proposal, the banns were published, and we were bound together. I wrote a rose-tinted romance, which no circulating library could be without, instead of the veracious picture of life I longed to paint; and I moved from 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras, to 22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster.