Arthur returned to the sick-room with a sinking heart. It seemed an inconceivable thing that that strong frame, the vehicle of so many energies, should be in process of dissolution. It had fulfilled the intention of its Maker for so many years, borne heat and cold, the strain of struggle and fatigue, with such a perfect adaptation, with such indefatigable vigour, its every atom mutely obedient to the guiding will; and now it must be numbered with the spent forces of creation. It must return to the womb of Nature from which it sprang, and become part of the innumerable dust of perished generations. Such was the law of waste that ruled the world—an awful thought to a son beside a father's death-bed. And against the certain working of that law, what had man to place but frail and feeble hopes; what, at best, but the solemn asseveration of a faith daily contradicted by the incontrovertible realities of physical dissolution, by the stark facts of departure, disappearance? ... An awful thought, indeed, before which the stoutest hearts have trembled.
His father lay quite silent. He had not spoken for many hours. There was no sound but the soft hissing of the steam in the bronchitis kettle, and the dropping of a cinder on the hearth.
Towards dawn he spoke.
"Well... well! ... Seems as if it was all a mistake.... A-striving and a-struggling, and nothing come of it. Folk'll laugh.... Him as had the city at his feet, working for poor old Grimes. It's a poor end!—a poor end!"
"Father, don't you know me?"
"It isn't Helen, is it? No, she went away. Poor little girl!"
The mind pursued its own sad communings.
"Well, I guess God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand. He don't want apologies. I am what I am."
The grayness of the dawn filled the room.
Suddenly he raised himself slightly on his pillow. He grasped Arthur's hand. There came into the tired eyes a new light, a long, intense wonder-look.