For the sake of revealing her modes of thought, I will give one more specimen of my conversations with her, ere I pass on. It took place the evening before her departure for her own house. Her husband had gone to make some final preparations, of which there had been many. For one who expected to be unclothed that she might be clothed upon, she certainly made a tolerable to-do about the garment she was so soon to lay aside; especially seeing she often spoke of it as an ill-fitting garment--never with peevishness or complaint, only, as it seemed to me, with far more interest than it was worth. She had even, as afterwards appeared, given her husband--good, honest, dog-like man--full instructions as to the ceremonial of its interment. Perhaps I should have been considerably less bewildered with her conduct had I suspected that she was not half so near death as she chose to think, and that she had as yet suffered little. That evening, the stars just beginning to glimmer through the warm flush that lingered from the sunset, we sat together in the drawing-room looking out on the sea. My patient appearing, from the light in her eyes, about to go off into one of her ecstatic moods, I hastened to forestall it, if I might, with whatever came uppermost; for I felt my inability to sympathize with her in these more of a pain than my reader will, perhaps, readily imagine. "It seems like turning you out to let you go to-morrow, Mrs. Cromwell," I said; "but, you see, our three months are up two days after, and I cannot help it." "You have been very kind," she said, half abstractedly. "And you are really much better. Who would have thought three weeks ago to see you so well to-day?" "Ah! you congratulate me, do you?" she rejoined, turning her big eyes full upon me; "congratulate me that I am doomed to be still a captive in the prison of this vile body? Is it kind? Is it well?" "At least, you must remember, if you are _doomed_, who dooms you." "'Oh that I had the wings of a dove!'" she cried, avoiding my remark, of which I doubt if she saw the drift. "Think, dear Mrs. Percivale: the society of saints and angels!--all brightness and harmony and peace! Is it not worth forsaking this world to inherit a kingdom like that? Wouldn't _you_ like to go? Don't _you_ wish to fly away and be at rest?" She spoke as if expostulating and reasoning with one she would persuade to some kind of holy emigration. "Not until I am sent for," I answered. "I _am_ sent for," she returned. "'The wave may be cold, and the tide may be strong; But, hark! on the shore the angels' glad song!' "Do you know that sweet hymn, Mrs. Percivale? There I shall be able to love him aright, to serve him aright! "'Here all my labor is so poor! Here all my love so faint! But when I reach the heavenly door, I cease the weary plaint.'" I couldn't help wishing she would cease it a little sooner.