“If you had not come it would have been too late! Muriel shut the door!” Muriel shut the door. The room was very warm, and the bright winter sunshine lit up the gold in her hair, and brought out the smile which was always latent in her eyes. She sat down by him and took his hand. “Have they made your chocolate nicely?” she asked. “Never! Of course they haven’t. I am infamously neglected. My slightest wish is thwarted. I am not master in my own house, Muriel! That is why I sent for you. You at least, before you became so selfish and absorbed in your own pleasure, knew how to look after my comfort. The doctor says I must on no account move. I suffer agonies from my foot, and if anything was to upset me the gout might fly to my heart! Yet though I have spoken about it again and again, they _will_ leave skin on my hot milk!” “Shall I make you some more chocolate, and boil the milk myself?” asked Muriel smiling. He growled an affirmative. And Muriel, chatting brightly about his favorite topics, made him fresh chocolate, and lightened the room by certain little readjustments of flowers, books and cushions that the eyes of the most diligent of servants always just miss over, as if to prove that self-help smiles after all. Sir Arthur Dallerton had aged terribly. Death’s hand rested upon so much that was mortal. It is only in such cases that death is dreadful. Muriel, who had so often seen it, thought she had never seen it more sadly, for in his eyes was the haunting fear from which there is no escape. Later on in the evening he called her to him. She had been singing over some old Scotch airs. She came and sat on a footstool at his feet, with her head on his knee. He liked to stroke her hair and hold her hand; it gave him a sense of peace and security. “Muriel,” he said, “do you think there is any chance of—anything happening to me?” The verb “to die” is terrible to some people. Sir Arthur Dallerton preferred the evasion of something happening. “Why, no, dear; what should—happen?” said Muriel smiling. “Things—sad things might cease to happen for you; but that would be beautiful, wouldn’t it?” “Oh, Muriel, I don’t want to die! I am afraid! afraid!” His voice rose almost to a scream. She stroked his hand and soothed him as if he were a frightened child. “There, there, dear heart! it won’t hurt you, see; there isn’t any death, or anything to be afraid of, surely! Only light, peace and rest, dear uncle, and all the beautiful, lovely things of earth quite free, and nothing to hurt any more!” “Oh, Muriel, child, do you think I shall see people whom I’ve come across in life? Oh, it’s awful!” The poor, silly, selfish life, held hopelessly before his eyes by the Inexorable Reality, made him catch his breath. The girl’s heart sank, but she spoke with firm assurance. “We shall meet nothing that we can’t bear—nothing that is too hard for us—for God is just as strong to save after death as before.”