'_I come! Mother of all!_' The oft, old-repeated cry rang joyously up into the roof, followed by a strange, dull thud, and silence--dead silence. The bath had been emptied that morning for the cold weather, and Dan Fitzgerald was lying face downward on the hard cement with a broken neck. Dead! Dead, without a word, a sigh, or a regret! And Chândni, growing tired of patience, went home to the bazaar, grumbling at her ill-luck, telling herself she might still write, if it were worth while. But Dan was beyond her spite, beyond other things which, even without that spite, might have killed the best part of him. Yet even in romance the sixth commandment outweighs all the others. The novelist may maim and degrade, may bear false witness against his own creations and filch from them the very characteristics which he has given them, in order to make degradation happy, but he must not kill; death in the verdict of the world being the only real tragedy. So at any rate seemed the opinion of most people when in the early morning the gardeners coming to their work found Dan's pony drowsing, half asleep, still tethered to a hibiscus bush, whose great blossoms--in topsy-turvy fashion--showed rosy-red in death and snowy-white in life. It was terribly sad, they said; an unredeemed tragedy, cruel, needless; altogether a manifestation needing much true Christian faith; one of the accidents of real life, so exasperating because so causeless, so inartistic because so unnecessary. These and many other comments the mourners made as, when the funeral was over, they returned home; and so, it being Sunday morning, went to church, where they sang 'Jerusalem the Golden' piously. Only Rose lingered, her kind, soft hands laying the half-dead lotus like sentinels on the grave; for Gwen's pure white cross of gardenia had, at her request, been buried on the coffin. 'I can't somehow be so sorry,' she said to Lewis, between her sobs. 'He was so happy that last night. I seem to see his face still.' But the man caught his breath in hard. There was a verse which would ring in his ears, his heart; for he had helped to lift poor Dan, and it had come to memory then-- 'Broken in pieces like a potter's vessel.' Yet, after all, what did it matter? but Rose must never know. In such things he would stand between her and needless pain. And Gwen? She, as the phrase goes, bore up wonderfully. Not that she did not love the dead man dearly, but because she did love him. For odd as it may seem--topsy-turvywise, perhaps, like the hibiscus flowers--she had the same consolation as Rose Tweedie. 'I did not tell him,' she said to herself as she lay in her darkened room. 'He was happy to the last. I did my best--I did my best.' So she cried softly; and so, once more, she escaped from her own remorse, and was comforted. CHAPTER XXVIII