“Thou art wholly mine,” she said. “They will none know thee as I know thee, my beloved--the hearing of none will hang expectant on thy footfall as my hearing has served thee--none will wait upon thy dear whims as my whims have waited--the notes and shades of thy dear voice shall arouse in none other the sweet reverberations that have echoed in the hollows of my quick ears.... Thou wilt bury with me thy largest self.... I die wholly rich.... The rest may have the unessential husk of thee.... Thou hast given me the Realities.... Thou hast brought me into Paradise....” For near upon a month Moll Davenant lay a-dying to the sublime litany of a great passion; and in her dying touched the hem of the garment that veils the majesty of Life. She died on the Day of the Dead--her slender fingers in Betty’s--passed, with a little sigh of glad relief to be asleep, into the eternal mystery. Eustace Lovegood, his head buried in his arms, knelt by the bed. He was roused to consciousness of death by a sob from Betty as she touched the sightless eyes and drew down the blinds of the dead woman’s soul. “Betty,” said he, a great tear trickling slowly down the gentle fellow’s pale cheek, “she was happy, indeed, to go into the dark holding your dear hand.” The last leaves of the year were falling, a threadbare russet carpet to their feet, as they bore Moll’s still white body to her grave. Babette with Betty added the holiness of her innocent heart’s service to the simple dignity of the slow procession. As they turned out of the street into the Boule Miche, all wayfarers halting and standing with heads uncovered as the poor silent body passed to its chill resting-place--children ceasing from play, hushedly, to pull off caps of reverence; workmen and loafers, students and women, merchants and servants, paying homage to that strange procession of the dead which all must one day lead--a workman turned to another: “Poor soul,” said he, with a great pity--“she will never walk Paris again.” So might that sorrowing angel have spoken as, with irrevocable clang, he sadly shut on departing Eve the excluding gates of Paradise. CHAPTER LIX _Wherein it is suspect that our Betty has the Healing Touch_ Betty had early perceived, with wise foreseeing eyes, that life’s scheme is not work nor leisure nor sleep. The human day is compact of all that makes for happy sanity--work and rest and the decent pleasures that are called recreation--each as important as the other, each a part of the triple crown that tops the human day’s achievement. Every mortal has the birthright to this splendid heritage; and where there is lack in the three, there has been filching. There be foul rogues who ever shirk the toil, and such must of necessity steal another’s leisure to overfill his own measure. Work Betty never shirked.