These words ached through his mind. He could hardly have said whether he spoke them aloud or not. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. By some carefulness, probably Helen Thorne's, the usual ghastly circumstance of death was spared Jean. She lay quite naturally and happily in her own bed, in her lace-frilled night-dress, with her bright hair braided as she used to braid it for the night. Except for her pallor--and she had been a little pale so long that this was not oppressive--she wore one of her charming looks. The conviction that she was not dead persisted in the husband almost to the point of pugnacity. It occurred to him that if he lifted her she would cling to him, and comfort herself against his heart. "Come, Jean!" he said. He held out his arms. "Forgive me, Jean.... I shall never forgive myself." Then he stooped to kiss her; and _then_ he slid to his knees, and hid his face in his shaking hands, and uttered no cry, nor any word or sound. He was so still, and he was still so long, that his friends took alarm for him, and Helen Thorne quietly opened the door. When she saw him, she retreated as quietly, went downstairs, and called his little girl. Pink trotted up noisily as Pink always did, hurried to her mother's room, and hesitated on the threshold. When she said "Hullo, Papa!" her father turned and saw her standing there. He made an instinctive movement towards her; the child ran to him; he caught her, and kissed her little hands and hair, and Pink said: "Crying, Papa? Have you got 'e toofache? ... Come to Mummer Dee. She 'll comfort you." Into the Church of the Happy Saints, where Jean was used to worship (for she was a religious woman, in her quiet, unobtrusive way), they carried her for her last prayer and chant. And it was noticed how many people there were among the mourners of this gentle lady to whom she had done some kindness, forgotten by every one except themselves, or, more likely, not known to any one else; obscure people, those who had not many friends, and especially sick people, the not helpless, but not curable, whom life and death alike pass by. In her short, invalid life Jean had remembered everybody within her reach who bore this fate; and it would never be known now in what sweet fashion she had contrived to make over to these poor souls a precious portion of her abounding courage, or the gift of Jean's own sympathy. This was something quite peculiar to herself. It was finer than the shading of words in a poem, as reverent as the motion of feeling in a prayer, and always as womanly as Jean. He who followed her to her burial in such a trance of anguish as few men know who love a wife and cherish her (as so many do, that women may well thank Heaven for their manly number),--he who had loved, but had not cherished, looked into Jean's open grave, and believed that in all the world he stood most desolate among afflicted men.