Page:Lord of the World - Benson - 1908.djvu/89

Rh He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.

"It is not certain that she will die—it is not imminent?" she asked.

"No, no; she may live ten years, I said."

He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector, and went away.

The old lady was lying quietly in bed, when the girl went up, and put out a wrinkled hand.

"Well, my dear?" she asked.

"It is just a little weakness, mother. You must lie quiet and do nothing. Shall I read to you?"

"No, my dear; I will think a little."

It was no part of Mabel's idea to duty to tell her that she was in danger, for there was no past to set straight, no Judge to be confronted. Death was an ending, not a beginning. It was a peaceful Gospel; at least, it became peaceful as soon as the end had come.

So the girl went downstairs once more, with a quiet little ache at her heart that refused to be still.

What a strange and beautiful thing death was, she told herself—this resolution of a chord that had hung suspended for thirty, fifty or seventy years—back again into the stillness of the huge Instrument that was all in all to itself. Those same notes would be struck again, were being struck again even now all over the world, though with an infinite delicacy of difference in the touch; but that particular emotion was gone: it was foolish to think that it was sounding eternally elsewhere, for there was no elsewhere. She, too, herself would cease one day, let her see to it that the tone was pure and lovely.