Since his return from captivity the terrier had hung about her with a love more devoted even than before their separation. He watched her as only a dog can watch the creature it loves. He would not let her out of his sight. He could not forget how he had been kept away from her; and he lived in fear of another parting. If he were not lying at her feet, or nestling against the soft folds of her gown, he was sitting at the door of her room, the door that hid her from him; the cruel door that kept him from her immediate presence. He lay at her bedroom door all night, and rushed in, with the first entrance of nurse or maid in the morning, to greet her with hairy paws upon her coverlet, and irresistible canine kisses upon her cheek. This was the best love that remained to her; the love that had no after-thought, and left no sting. She had provided a friend for him in days when she would be no longer there. Francis Symeon had promised to take him, and love him, and give him a happy old age and a gentle sleep when he was weary.
As the winter days shortened she grew perceptibly weaker, and the tired heart felt as if its work in this world must be nearly done.
Mr. Symeon came every day, and stayed for a long time, a quiet figure sitting in the low armchair by the wood fire, sometimes in silence that was restful for the invalid, though she loved to hear him talk; for his thoughts were not of this narrow life and its trumpery pleasures and eating cares, but of the land beyond the veil.
"Do you believe they think of us, sometimes, those who have gone beyond?" Vera asked in her low, sweet voice, as they sat in the winter gloaming.
"I believe they think of us often—always, if they have loved us much."
"I had a friend whom I offended, cruelly, dreadfully," she said slowly, as if with an effort, "and he died before I had even begun to be sorry. And when he was dead and I knew that his spirit was there, among the shadows, near me, I was afraid, horribly afraid. I could only think of his anger, never of the possibility of his forgiveness. For a long, long time I was afraid that I should see him. I could imagine the dreadful anger in his face. His face and form were always there, in the background of my life; and I was afraid of being alone, afraid of silence and darkness and all lonely places; so I gave myself up to society, and the amusements and distractions of brainless people, without ever really caring for them—only to escape thought. But I could not stop my brain from thinking. Thought went on like a relentless iron mill grinding, grinding, grinding the same dead husks by day and night; and the friend whose love I had wounded was always there. And then there came a time when I sickened of everything upon earth—society, splendour, music, pictures, even mountains and lakes and forests, and all the beauty of the world. All things had become loathsome, and I wandered about with a restless spirit in my brain that would not leave me in peace. Then, slowly, slowly, the faint, sweet sense of peace came back—the angry face was gone—and the face that looked at me out of the shadows was only sad—and then the time came when I felt that the dead had changed towards me in that dim world you have taught me to understand, and that there was pardon and pity in the great heart I had wounded; and one day the burden was lifted from my soul, and I knew that I was forgiven. Now tell me, my kind friend, was this hallucination, was it just the outcome of my brooding thoughts, dwelling perpetually upon the same subject, or was the spirit of my dead friend really in touch with mine? Was it by his strong will reaching across the barrier of death that the assurance of forgiveness had come to my soul, or was I the dupe of my own imagination, my own longing for pardon?"
"No, you were not deceived. It is for such as you that the veil is sometimes lifted, the creatures in whom mind is more than flesh, the elect of human clay. I told you as much as that years ago when you first talked to me of the world we all believe in, we who meet together and wait for the voices out of the shadows, the wisdom and the faith that cannot die, the voices of the influencing minds. No, my sweet friend, have neither fear nor doubt. The sense of pity and pardon that has come into your soul is a message from the friend you loved.
"Would the happy spirit descend
From the realms of light or song,
Should I fear to greet my friend