The missionary's wife continued her good work with redoubled energy. It was perhaps one of the few really unselfish things which she had ever done in the course of a pious but fundamentally selfish life, and it gave her pleasure and courage. The knowledge that some one was weaker than herself and needed her was new strength to her new-born heroism. "It is so frightfully hot," she said half apologetically. "Why isn't the punkah-man at work?" "The 'punkah-man' has bolted with the rest of them," Mrs. Carmichael answered. "I dare say I could work it, though I have never tried." "It is hardly worth while to begin now," Beatrice observed, and this simple acknowledgment that the end was at hand received no contradiction. Once again the silence was unbroken, save for the soft swish of the fan and Mrs. Cary's heavy, irregular breathing. Yet the five women who in the full swing of their life had been diametrically opposed to one another were now united in a common sympathy. Death, far more than a leveler of class, is the melting-pot into which are thrown all antagonisms, all violent discords of character. The one great fact overshadows everything, and the petty stumbling-blocks of daily life are forgotten. More than that still--it is the supreme moment in man's existence when the innermost treasures or unsuspected hells are revealed beyond all denial. And in these five women, hidden in two cases at least beneath a mass of meanness, selfishness and indifference, there lay an unusual power of self-sacrifice and pity. Death was drawing near to them all, and their one thought was how to make his coming easier for the other. When the silence grew unbearable, it was Mrs. Carmichael who had the courage to break it with a trivial criticism respecting the manner in which Lois was making the sandwiches. "You should put the butter on before you cut them," she said tartly, "and as little as possible. I'm quite sure it has gone rancid, and then George won't touch them. He is so fussy about the butter." Mrs. Berry looked up. The perspiration of physical fear stood on her cold forehead, but her roused will-power fought heroically and conquered. "And, please, would you mind making one or two without butter?" she said. "Percy says all Indian butter is bad. Of course, it's only an idea of his, but men are such faddy creatures, don't you think?" "They wouldn't be men if they weren't--" Mrs. Carmichael had begun, when she broke off, and the scissors that had been snipping their way steadily through the rough linen jagged and dropped on the table. She picked them up immediately and went on with an impatient exclamation at her own carelessness. But the involuntary start had coincided with a loud report from outside in the darkness, and a smothered scream. Lois put down her knife. "Won't you come and help me?" she said to Beatrice. "Your mother will not notice that you have gone."