She remembered the first years after her second marriage, the years of trivial pleasures and hurry and excitement, and with how light a step she had gone up and down that stately staircase, to give herself over to her Parisian maid, and to have her smart toilet of the morning changed for the still smarter clothes of the afternoon, while she submitted impatiently, with a mind full of worthless things: the fashion of her gown, the shape of her last new hat. That rush from one amusement to another--endless hours without pause--had been like the morphia maniac's needle. It had killed thought. All that was left of life now was thought, or rather memory; for of late thought and memory were one. Her doctors might do what they liked with her, so long as they let her stay in the silent house, and did not take away her dog. Since his return from captivity the terrier had hung about her with a love more devoted even than before their separation. He watched her as only a dog can watch the creature it loves. He would not let her out of his sight. He could not forget how he had been kept away from her; and he lived in fear of another parting. If he were not lying at her feet, or nestling against the soft folds of her gown, he was sitting at the door of her room, the door that hid her from him; the cruel door that kept him from her immediate presence. He lay at her bedroom door all night, and rushed in, with the first entrance of nurse or maid in the morning, to greet her with hairy paws upon her coverlet, and irresistible canine kisses upon her cheek. This was the best love that remained to her; the love that had no after-thought, and left no sting. She had provided a friend for him in days when she would be no longer there. Francis Symeon had promised to take him, and love him, and give him a happy old age and a gentle sleep when he was weary. As the winter days shortened she grew perceptibly weaker, and the tired heart felt as if its work in this world must be nearly done. Mr. Symeon came every day, and stayed for a long time, a quiet figure sitting in the low armchair by the wood fire, sometimes in silence that was restful for the invalid, though she loved to hear him talk; for his thoughts were not of this narrow life and its trumpery pleasures and eating cares, but of the land beyond the veil. "Do you believe they think of us, sometimes, those who have gone beyond?" Vera asked in her low, sweet voice, as they sat in the winter gloaming. "I believe they think of us often--always, if they have loved us much."