“It’s only for five days,” she said to herself. “And he’s coming to bring us home on Saturday, but how I wish he were coming too.” For lately he had looked very, very ill. His face had been grey and his eyes curiously absent, and he had had a bad cough for many weeks, and he said he suffered greatly from lumbago. Besides, he had not gone down to town so often lately—or if so not till later in the afternoon—and there seemed very little money. Deborah, seeing this, prayed all the more earnestly the simple prayer. “He’s all right,” she used to say at times. “It’s only me, I’m fidgety.” But on the day when she had to go away she felt as if she could scarcely bear to part with him. Whilst she was busy making her preparations in the morning for going he read the paper. But every now and again she ran down to speak to him, just for the sake of saying something, but he seemed even more silent than usual. At last when she was ready he came up into the lobby to see her off. She threw her arms round him and kissed him with all the passionate love she had for him, and he kissed her, and said to her,— “Mind thou does well now. Mind thou does well.” It was not very elegant, was it? But be that as it may, they were his last words to her, so perhaps even the severest critics will let them be. At the time she thought they referred to the examination she was taking, but afterwards, long years afterwards, they came to have a broader and a clearer light. “You’ll come early on Saturday,” she said. And the door closed. She went off lightly into the town, feeling somewhat bright and happy. He never came on Saturday. On the Friday he went away from home when the others had gone out for the evening to some friends. He went away all alone in the cold, shivering fog and took the night boat across the raw, dark sea. The next that was heard of him was that he was drowned. From the Friday night until the Wednesday night nothing was heard at all. It was Jack who came to bring them home on Saturday, and he came in the morning instead of at night. How miserable it was going home! Let alone the biting wind, how cold and cheerless it was in every room! There was his hat and all his things, just where he always left them, because he’d put on very, very old things to go away in—things he hadn’t worn for years. Why, he’d taken that old grey coat that was so frayed, and which he used to go to tend the bees in—and now it was mid-winter, and the hum of the bees was silent, and the scented flowers all dead. He had taken everything that was old and thin and worn, and all night long he had stood on the deck and spoken now and then to a sailor. It was terribly cold, one of the coldest nights of the year—and he had such a dreadful cough. Two days afterwards they’d found him dead, or drowned—who can tell, who knows? For none was there to smooth the bed of roses or to soothe the last happy end.