He made a fretful gesture of protest. She had no right to be quite at peace. He lived in the ideas in which he had been bred. If he had offended a gentleman, let him apologize before it was too late. Insensibly he applied the parallel from the seen world to the unseen--as, indeed, he had been taught. His mind stuck in particular categories of conduct; for some credit was to be given, for some penalties had to be paid; it was a system of marks good and bad. Even in the education of the young this is now held to be a disputable theory. He thought that he had known very intimately his dear old friend who now lay dying. He found that he knew her very little; he could not get close to her mind at the end. For Winnie Maxon she had one more revelation. Mrs. Lenoir would not 'see anybody'--she also detected the special meaning, and, with a tired smile, repelled the suggestion--but in hints and fragments she displayed to Winnie in what mood she was facing death. Courageously--almost indifferently; the sun was set, and at night people go to bed--tired people they are generally. She had not thought much of responsibility, of a reckoning; she suffered or achieved none of the resulting impulse to penitence; she even smiled again at the virtue of a repentance become compulsory, because it was possible to sin no more. "Some women I've known became terribly penitent at forty," she said to Winnie. "I never knew one do it at twenty-five." Her attitude seemed to say that she had been born such and such a creature, and, accordingly, had done such and such things--and thus had lived till it became time for the conditioned, hardly voluntary, life of the creature to end. On the religious side it was pure negation, but on the worldly there was something positive. As verily as the General, as Bertie Merriam himself, she had 'played the game.' Her code was intact; her honour, as judged by it, unsmirched. "I've been straight, Winnie," she said, in almost the last conscious minute. Then came oblivion; the soul was rid of its burden many hours before the body was. She passed from the life in which she had been so great an offender against the rules, had played so interesting a part, had done so many kind things, had been such a good friend, even on occasion so resolute a resister of temptation--and a woman not to be mentioned. As Winnie wept over her and paid her the last offices of love--for she, at least, had received the purest gold of unseeking love--her heart suffered a mighty searching pang of tenderness. Old words, of old time familiar, came back. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in." Such things had her dead friend done for her. An exaltation and a confidence took hold on her after she had kissed the cold brow. But outside the room stood the old General, sad, grey, heavy of face. His voice was broken, his hands tremulous. "I wish--I wish she'd have seen somebody, Winnie!"