that is dear to him.  We would rather give him all we possess outright than attempt to console him for the loss.  And yet—­what is there in life more sweet than to be consoled and comforted, and to have the true sympathy of some one, even a little near to us, when we ourselves are suffering.  The people we do not want shower cards of condolence on us, and carriage-loads of flowers on the poor dead thing; the ones who could be of some help to the tortured soul are afraid to speak; the very delicacy of kind-heartedness in them, which makes us wish they would come, makes them stay away.

I hope Isaacs will not send for me, poor fellow.

If he does, what shall I say?  God help me.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

The hours came and went, and though worn out with the exertions of the past days, and with the emotions of the morning, I lay in my rooms, unable to sleep even for a moment.  I went down once or twice to Isaacs’ rooms to know whether he had returned, but he had not, nor had any one heard from him.  At last the evening shadows crept stealthily up, darkening first one room, then another, until there was not light enough to read by.  Then I dropped my book and went out to breathe the cold air on the verandah.  Wearily the hours went by, and still there was no sign of my friend.

Towards eleven o’clock the moon, now waning, once more rose above the hills and shed her light across the lawn, splendid still, but with the first tinge of melancholy that clouds her departing glory.  Exhausted nature asserted herself, and chilled to the bone I went to bed, and, at last, to sleep.

I slept peacefully at first, but soon the events that had come over my life began to weave themselves in wild disharmony through my restful visions, and the events that were to come cast their lengthening shadows before them.  The world of past, present, and future thoughts, came into my soul, distorted, without perspective, nothing to help me to discern the good from the evil, the suffering gone and long-forgotten from the pain in store.  The triumph of discrepancy over waking reason, the fancied victories of the sleep-dulled intellect over the outrageous discord of the wakeful imagination.  I passed a most miserable night.  It seemed rest to wake, until I was awake, and then it seemed rest to sleep again, until my eyes were closed.  At last it came, no dream this time; Isaacs stood by my bed-side in the gray of the morning, himself grayer than the soft neutral-tinted dawn.  It was a terrible moment to me, though I had expected it since yesterday.  I felt like the condemned criminal in France, who does not know the day or hour of his death.  The first intimation is when the executioner at daybreak enters his cell and bids him come forth to die, sometimes in less than sixty seconds from his waking.[2]

How gray he looked, and how infinitely tried.  I rose swiftly and took his hands, which were deadly cold, and led him to the outer room.  I could not say anything, for I did not know how such a terribly sudden blow would affect him; he was so unlike any one else.  Why is it so hard to comfort the afflicted?  Why should the most charitable duty it is ever given us to perform be, without exception, the hardest of tasks?