So Kate sat where he could see her, and they coaxed the fluttering heart to yet a little further effort. Dr. Barrington supervised everything; counted his own pulse; noted its decline with his accustomed accuracy. The sunlight streamed into the room through the tall shafts of trees; outside the sighing of the pines was heard, rising now and then to a noble requiem. It lifted Kate's soul on its deep harmonies, and she was able to bear herself with fortitude. "It's been so sweet to be with you, dear," she murmured in the ears which were growing dull to earthly sounds. "Say that I've made up to you a little for my willfulness. I've always loved you--always." "I know," he whispered. "I understand--everything--now!" In fact, his glance answered hers with full comprehension. "The beat is getting very low now, Doctor," he murmured, the fingers of his right hand on his left wrist; "very infrequent--fifteen minutes more--" Dr. Hudson tried to restrain him from his grim task of noting his own sinking vitality, but the old physician waved him off. "It's very interesting," he said. It seemed so, indeed. Suddenly he said quite clearly and in a louder voice than he had used that day: "It has stopped. It is the end!" Kate sprang to her feet incredulously. There was a moment of waiting so tense that the very trees seemed to cease their moaning to listen. In all the room there was no sound. The struggling breath had ceased. The old physician had been correct--he had achieved the thing he had set himself to do. He had announced his own demise. XXII Kate had him buried beside the wife for whom he had so inconsistently longed. She sold the old house, selected a few keepsakes from it, disposed of all else, and came, late in November, back to the city. Marna's baby had been born--a little bright boy, named for his father. Mrs. Barsaloux, relenting, had sent a layette of French workmanship, and Marna was radiantly happy. "If only _tante_ will come over for Christmas," Marna lilted to Kate, "I shall be almost too happy to live. How good she was to me, and how ungrateful I seemed to her! Write her to come, Kate, mavourneen. Tell her the baby won't seem quite complete till she's kissed it." So Kate wrote Mrs. Barsaloux, adding her solicitation to Marna's. Human love and sympathy were coming to seem to her of more value than anything else in the world. To be loved--to be companioned--to have the vast loneliness of life mitigated by fealty and laughter and tenderness--what was there to take the place of it? Her heart swelled with a desire to lessen the pain of the world. All her egotism, her self-assertion, her formless ambitions had got up, or down, to that,--to comfort the comfortless, to keep evil away from little children, to let those who were in any sort of a prison go free. Yet she knew very well that all of this would lack its perfect meaning unless there was some one to say to her--to her and to none other: "I understand."