“Do you think that I am partly responsible for her wickedness?” Rodney demanded fiercely. “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know; I hope not,” said Cis wearily. “I’m beginning to see that we are almost always sharer in a wrong that is within our own radius. We are so slow to see, so indifferent to save.” The taxi stopped at the door of the House of the Good Shepherd, which opened at once to admit Cis and Rodney. “Yes, very low,” the Sister answered Cicely’s question. “They say she will die to-night. She has made her confession, and received the last rites; she is conscious and lies watching the door for her husband to come.” Rodney felt the word like a cord around him. None of these Catholics, whom he had tried to leave behind him, but who were again interwoven into his life, heeded the decree of divorce which annulled for him his title of husband. How unbending, everlasting, certain, were the ways of Rome even in all her least, most distant avenues! “Oh, Rod!” Myrtle breathed his name as he entered. “Now I’ll die. Maybe it’s true God will forgive me, if you can. You’re harder than God. I’m sorry, honest. Forgive me, Roddie?” Rodney looked down on her; at the fluttering hand feebly extended toward him; at the face which he had known young and pretty, now wasted, consumed by Myrtle’s life, the life now panting toward its final breath. A great pity came upon him. There, on the other side of the bed, knelt Cis, the stainless girl whom he loved, her face white and tear-wet, sweet and grave with pity, and pain, and fear. Who was he to condemn, to refuse mercy? Did he not need it, too? Had his life been so far beyond reproach? Cis, kneeling there, thought that he was worse than Myrtle, for she had sinned, but was absolved. She had broken God’s laws, but he had turned his back on God coldly, deliberately. And he had not confessed himself a sinner. He was not a hard-hearted man, and the awfulness of what lay there before him, what awaited Myrtle, now hoping for Rodney’s pardon, so soon to stand before God for His sentence, melted him, broke down his anger against his wife. Rodney knelt beside the bed, and took the fluttering hand, folding its feeble fingers within his own. “It’s all right, Myrtie; don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll forgive everything, and I’m sorry if I ever drove you an inch on your road. It’s all right, poor girl. Go to sleep and take your rest.” “Well, God bless you, Rod!” sighed Myrtle. “I’m going to sleep; pray I’ll rest.” Beside that bed for three hours Cis, Myrtle’s divorced husband, who at last realized that there was no divorce but the one Myrtle, slipping away, was giving him, and a Sister recited the prayers for a parting soul. At the first hour of the morning the soul quietly, with a few deep drawn breaths, parted. Rodney went back to Nan’s in the taxi with Cis. They did not speak during the drive. But as Rodney opened the door for Cis with her pass key, he put out his hand and Cis laid hers in it without a word.