Horace sat softly upon the edge of the bed, and gathered her two hands tenderly in his. He did not attempt to keep back the tears which welled to his eyes, nor did he try to talk. Thus they were together for what seemed a long time, surrounded by a silence which was full of voices to them both. A wan smile settled upon her face as she held him in her intent gaze. “Take the boy,” she whispered at last; “he is Horace, too. Don’t let him lie--ever--to any girl.” The young man groaned in spite of himself, and for answer gently pressed her hands. “I promise you that, Jess,” he said, after a time, in a broken voice. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. The damp roughness of the skin chilled and terrified him, but the radiance on her face deepened. “It hurts--to breathe,” she said, after a time with a glance of affectionate apology in her smile. Subdued noises were faintly heard now in the hallway outside, and presently the door was opened cautiously, and a tall new figure entered the room. After a moment’s hesitation Reuben Tracy tiptoed his way to the bedside, and stood gravely behind and above his former partner. “Is she conscious?” he asked of Boyce, in a tremulous whisper; and Horace, bending his head still lower, murmured between choking sobs: “It is Mr. Tracy, Jess, come to say--to see you.” Her eyes brightened with intelligence. “Good--good,” she said, slowly, as if musing to herself. The gaze which she fastened upon Reuben’s face was strangely full of intense meaning, and he felt it piercing his very heart. Minutes went by under the strain of this deep, half-wild, appealing look. At last she spoke, with a greater effort at distinctness than before, and in a momentarily clearer tone. “You were always kind,” she said. “Don’t hurt--my boy. Shake hands with him--for my sake.” The two young men obeyed mechanically, after an instant’s pause, and without looking at each other. Neither had eyes save for the white face on the pillows in front of them, and for the gladdened, restful light which spread softly over it as their hands touched in amity before her vision. Now she seemed no longer to see them. In the languor of peace which had come to possess her, even the sense of pain in breathing was gone. There were shadowy figures on the retina of her brain, but they conveyed no idea save of general beatitude to her mind. The space in which her senses floated was radiant and warm and full of formless beauty. Various individuals--types of her loosening ties to life--came and went almost unheeded in this daze. Lucinda, vehemently weeping, and holding the little fair-haired, wondering boy over the bed for her final kiss, passed away like a dissolving mist. Her father’s face, too, dawned upon this dream, tear-stained and woful, and faded again into nothingness. Other flitting apparitions there were, even more vague and brief, melting noiselessly into the darkened hush.