Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/256

 described the scene so accurately! How could she know the mother's very words, and that little incident of his helping the broken husband to rise?

Dr. Sedgwick stopped a passing cab and jumped in. His nerves were on edge. He did not like to meet these supernatural experiences on a bright, warm day in the beginning of the scientific twentieth century. The clang of the cable-car was in his ears, the shouts of quarrelsome cabmen rising above it, yet in these most prosaic surroundings that strange experience kept obtruding itself. Dr. Sedgwick put it away at last by a strong effort of will.

"Too much work, not enough nourishment, I'm afraid," he reflected, practically. "What she needs is a change of air, rest, and good food." This was satisfactory as far as it went. But no sooner had the doctor nicely adjusted his point of view than he recalled, with surprising vividness, that scene in the death-room.

Oh, the radiance of the dying face as the woman had looked up at that empty corner: "Katherine—you have come—how good—dear child. Now I can die content."

What had she seen? Dr. Sedgwick brusquely turned away from the answer.