Presently Aunt Hester opened her eyes, and they rested on the vacant pillow at her side. After a pause she slowly turned her head, and fixed her gaze upon the doctor's face. He thought that the power of speech had left her, but suddenly she spoke, quite clearly. “Where is my sister Judith?” she asked. There are times when the truth must be spoken, though it kill. “Your sister died yesterday,” replied the doctor. Aunt Hester lay quite still, staring at the ceiling. Her shrivelled fingers were picking at the counter-pane. Then a gleam of intelligence passed across her face. “And now,” she said, “I shall have a bed to myself. I have waited long enough.” Aunt Hester was very human, although the shadow of an angel's wing lay across her bed. * * * * * It was many years later that Christian Vellacott found himself in the presence of the Angel of Death again. A telegram from Havre was one day handed to him in the room at the back of the tall house in the Strand, and the result was that he crossed from Southampton to Havre that same night. As the sun rose over the sea the next morning, its earliest rays glanced gaily through the open port-hole of a cabin in a large ocean steamer, still panting from her struggle through tepid Eastern seas. In this little cabin lay the Jesuit missionary, René Drucquer, watching the moving reflections of the water, which played ceaselessly on the painted ceiling overhead. He had been sent home from India by a kind-hearted army surgeon; a doomed man, stricken by a climatic disease in which there was neither hope nor hurry. When the steamer arrived in the Seine it was found expedient to let the young missionary die where he lay. The local agent of the Society of Jesus was a kind-hearted man, and therefore a faithless servant. He acceded to René Drucquer's prayer to telegraph for Christian Vellacott. And now Vellacott was actually coming down the cabin stairs. He entered the cabin and stood by the sick man's bed. “Ah, you have come,” said the Frenchman, with that peculiar tone of pathetic humour which can only be rendered in the language that he spoke. “But how old! Do I look as old as that, I wonder? And hard--yes, hard as steel.” “Oh no,” replied Vellacott. “It may be that the hardness that was once there shows now upon my face--that is all.” The Frenchman looked lovingly at him, with eyes like the eyes of a woman. “And now you are a great man, they tell me.” Vellacott shrugged his shoulders. “In my way,” he admitted. “And you?” “I--I have taught.” “Ah! and has it been a success?” “In teaching I have learnt.” Vellacott merely nodded his head. “Do you know why I sent for you?” continued the missionary. “No.” “I sent for you in order to tell you that I burnt that letter at Audierne.” “I came to that conclusion, for it never arrived.” “I want you to forgive me.” Vellacott laughed. “I never thought of it again,” he replied heartily.