She sent for him. He went to her filled with a sense of insensibility. She was much worse, and suffering great pain. Hugh saw at once that she knew that all was over between them, and that he had seen her pass his door, or had been in her room, for he had left her door a little open, and she had left it shut. One pathetic, most pitiful glance of deprecating entreaty she fixed upon him, as after a few moments of speechless waiting, he turned to leave the room—which would have remained deathless in his heart, but that he interpreted it to mean: “Don’t tell;” so he got rid of it at once by the grant of its supposed request. She made no effort to detain him. She turned her face away, and, hard-hearted, he heard her sob, not as if her heart would break—that is little—but like an immortal woman in immortal agony, and he did not turn to comfort her. Perhaps it was better—how could he comfort her? Some kinds of comfort—the only kinds which poor mortals sometimes have to give—are like the food on which the patient and the disease live together; and some griefs are soonest got rid of by letting them burn out. All the fire-engines in creation can only prolong the time, and increase the sense of burning. There is but one cure: the fellow-feeling of the human God, which converts the agony itself into the creative fire of a higher life. As for Von Funkelstein, Hugh comforted himself with the conviction that they were destined to meet again.