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 on the thin wrist which lay outside the coverlet. He looked up as we entered, nodded to Miss Berrith, and at once turned his eyes back to Darius. This suggestion of acute attention was, to my way of thinking, more eloquent than any form of words.

And Darius — oh, Darius!

Every act and every word of his flashed back upon me, as I saw him lying there, so thin and small — the unspeakable mouth-organ, the disarming smile, the lines of “The Skeleton in Armor,” the sound of his rake upon the gravel and of his briskly-plied brushes in the cellar underneath my den, the morning of his coming, that of his dismissal, that of his return. Oh, happy, chattering, rattle-pated, little, dear Darius! Was this, indeed, the Valley of the Shadow?

Slowly his eyes unclosed, and then, as they rested on the face of Susie Berrith, the ghost of his old smile woke upon his lips, and he sighed, with the essence of content.