"I see, I see!" she moaned, and she was sure now that she loved him in his weakness as a mother might love her child that was blind, crippled, and in unending pain. She put the weapon into the bosom of her dress, and, with her hands outstretched, she cried: "I didn't tell him, darling. I hurried back to you when I thought--thought--thought of _this_. Something else must be done. Charlie wouldn't be willing to murder you. It was to prevent this that he went away." Her hands were around his neck. He was still under the chill spell of the ordeal he had faced. She drew his head down and kissed him again and again on the lips, as if to restore life's breath to him. "Yes, something else--but not _this_" she ran on. "We'll see--we'll see, sweetheart. If Charlie were here he'd stop you--he would--he would, and so must I. I see, you couldn't face it all, could you, dear? I ought to have thought of that sooner. Some one has said that God never puts more on us than we can bear, and that is why He turned me back to you when He did. Now, now, we can go to sleep, can't we, darling boy?" "Oh, it was wonderful--glorious--ecstatic!" he muttered as if to himself, his blank stare fixed on the space beyond her. "I was afraid--afraid--afraid as I put my hand in the drawer and felt it like the icy foot of a corpse; but when I had hold of it--" "What are you saying, darling?" Celeste asked, fearfully. "I'll never invest in stocks again. Down, down, down, and the money not my own. I'll be caught. I can't hide it. The examiners will come and look me in the eye, and--" "Oh, what is it, dear?" Celeste moaned, and, catching his arm, she shook him. "When I had hold of it," he wandered on, vacantly, "something said--out of the very darkness down where he and my wife were settling my fate--something said: 'Don't be afraid--it is nothing. It will be only a pinprick and you'll be free.' And I was free. I saw--I saw--I heard--I heard--I _felt_--yes, that is it, I _felt_ as a man feels when he is said to be dead and no living soul knows of the great change but himself." "Oh, William darling, you are ill--you are--" "Good boy, Charlie! Bully boy, my brother! You were true as steel--you knew it had gone down, down, down to the bottom of hell itself and so you ran away. But I was left with it, brother mine. I was in a vat filled with black, smirking imps. Every day I fought with them, every night. But I'm glad now. Are you dead, too? Is that light, or is it-- Who ever heard of light and music being the same thing? It is even more than that, eh, Charlie? It is language--the cosmic speech of the universe, and we are in a sea of eternal bliss." Celeste, wordless now, took his face between her trembling hands and tried to turn it toward her own, but it was immovable. He was chuckling, laughing, his eyes still fixed on space. Dropping her hands, Celeste ran to the head of the stairs, and, like a hysterical woman giving an alarm of fire, she called out: