Away in the distance, very far away, as she passed swiftly through those grey shadows of oblivion which so many of us would welcome as friends, she saw the figure of her lover up to the last standing erect and triumphant on his little pinnacle of fame, the living symbol of that for which she had come near renouncing every hope of the hereafter which held her at that very moment in its grip. The vision dispersed. Through the room, very slowly, she thought she felt little streams of cold air filtering; they made a dull rhythm, like the running water of a Highland burn. She tried to listen to their music, but could not; in the hour of death the brain, last servant to escape from the house of a powerful master, mocks our call. She struggled desperately to come back from the long passage down which her weakened spirit was being compelled—the last effort of one who was born a fighter. Over her body an icy sweat had broken, in her limbs there was no longer warmth or life. She listened to the beats of her heart striking dimly like the hammer of a clock that was running out. This, then, was death—the truce to struggle.
She was too tired even to be glad. But suddenly light broke.
At the beginning of life there had been offered to her, as there is offered to each one in turn, the choice of many banners, one of which she was bound to uphold until the end—fame, wealth, peace, honour, and love and sacrifice, which go together.
She had chosen the banner of love and sacrifice. Very feebly she sought to grasp it now; it seemed to her a visible fragment which she must wave as her breath died. She fell back. And suddenly out of the darkness she seemed to smell the perfume of a rose, a pure white flower that turned deep red before her eyes.
Was it fancy, or did the Figure on the wall, the crucified Christ, turn His head? All was blurred and indistinct, but once again she thought she heard Farquharson's saddened voice in her ears, and Farquharson's touch laid tenderly on her brow. She tried to say his name, but her stiffening lips would not frame it. She tried to grasp her rose, but it fell in dust.
In his cell below, an old monk, weeping, lifted his voice in passionate appeal.
"Oro supplex et acclinis
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis."
In the morning they found her still and quiet, in the possession of the one good gift which life had brought her. Her face was turned, her fingers pointing towards, but not grasping, the little wooden crucifix upon the wall. So they unhung it and laid it on her breast.
THE END
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.