Cecilia was breathing with difficulty: and Mr. Jasper would have removed Lettice, but there was resistance. Cecilia put him off with both hands, and clasped Lettice in a wild embrace. "One word! Only one word. Dear one, tell Felix from me—there is nothing—nothing—nothing worth living for, but to serve God! Tell him so! I would give anything—anything—to have lived a different life . . . Too late now . . . Too late for that . . . There is forgiveness . . . abundant pardon . . . and He will not cast away! . . . But oh, to have lived for Him! To have served Him! . . . The pitifulness of living to oneself, and coming to Him only at last! . . . O the difference now, if I had only lived for Him! . . . Lettice, don't forget—don't put off! Pray to be shown! I shall look for you there! And tell Felix—tell Felix—" Cecilia broke off: and those around her knew from her face that she could bear no more. "O Sissie, one moment—" "No, no. Good-bye, my dear. Tell Felix—he must come—" Cecilia controlled herself to say so much. Then to the doctor: "Yes—take her, please." Lettice was hurried away. The haste seemed to her cruel; and she could not see the mercifulness which would hide from her the sight of her sister's suffering. The whole interview with its abrupt termination half crushed her, and she lay for hours after, her face hidden, unable to look up or to bear being spoken to. But Cecilia Anderson was nearly at the end of her voyage. One more sharp tempest, and then her little vessel reached the harbour. Before midnight she had passed away. The telegram announcing what had happened came heavily upon Felix. He had not allowed himself to think of danger, had not pictured to himself the possibility of any such ending. A letter written on the evening of Thursday, to tell of the fresh attack, did not arrive until after the brief message which said that all was over. Felix had never known sorrow since his father's death, and then he had been a mere child. The cold touch of bereavement bewildered him. To hear of other people losing their friends was a matter of course, easily dismissed with a pitying word or two; but that he should lose Cecilia—Cecilia, with whom every inch of his life was associated, who had been parent, sister, protector, everything to him—that his Cecilia should have passed away beyond reach, into the world of the unseen, seemed incredible, even horrible. He felt a kind of indignant wrath that death should meddle with him and his, doing away with the pleasant future which he had pictured. Why should he suffer thus, when other people had their sisters spared to them?