She looks at him pityingly, with a flash of past energy in the lift of her head, and a curl of scorn on her pale lips: "The hell of the priests or parson? No, I do not. Is that worrying you? Don't you let it, old man, don't you let it! Wherever you are going, whatever after existence your poor troubled soul is fighting its way to, it _is not to their hell_!" The girl has come back and taken up her former position, and fans steadily, for the flies are gathering in greater numbers every hour. The veranda seems airless and close, and uncanny with unseen things; the doctor comes and goes; the servants peep out, and the hours seem to hold many hours in their embrace. She seems to live all her life over again. Things she has forgotten completely come vividly back to her. An old Maori man, who used to sell sweet potatoes and quaint ring-shells for napkin rings to the Pakeha lady in Tauranga Bay, floats before her inward vision as tangible as if he were next her; and a soldier servant, she can hear his voice, he used to sing as he pipe-clayed,-- "But kaipoi te waipero, Kaipoi te waiena; For Rangatira Sal, Bob Walker sold his pal, But he's now at the bottom o' the harbor!" Why did the stupid chorus come back to her now; what chink of brain did it lie in all these years? Oh what a brute she is and how callous! She ought to read prayers, or say things; in a few hours it will be too late ever to say a word more. She finds herself beating time with her foot to a jig tune, a bizarre accompaniment to the words "too late." She would give all she possesses to cry, yet she cannot; and so the day wears on. Later on she bends her head to him and asks: "Are you dozing or are you thinking? What are you thinking of?" He smiles. "Of zoo, dearums, of zoo!" "Have you said your prayers? Shall I read you any?" "Finished them long ago! I am just waiting; lying thinking of you, dearie, thinking of you. Happier than ever I was since I left off 'taw in the lay' and pegging tops." Her question was a concession to a past religious conscience; she feels as she puts it that as for herself, if she would die as she sits there, she would not trouble to pray; it would be well to drift out. There is another weary hour's silence; then he looks up at her and shivers slightly, and tightens his clasp of her hand. "Kiss me, duckums, kiss me! Now lay your little old phiz on the pillow close to mine, you dearest and best in the world! Close, close to mine."