A dark, heavy cloud took possession of both hearts, but John said only, “Come with me, mother.”  “No,” she answered, “this is Jane’s opportunity.  I must not interfere with it.  I shall be with you, dear John, though you may not see.  My kiss and blessing to the little one.  God help her!  Hurry, John!  I will have your horse at the door in ten minutes.”

In that long, dark, hurrying ride to London, he suddenly remembered that for two days he had been haunted by a waylaying thought of some verses he had read and cut out of a daily paper, and with the remembrance, back they came to his mind, setting themselves to a phantom melody he could hardly refrain himself from softly singing,

    “Many waters go softly dreaming
      On to the sea,
    But the river of Death floweth softest,
      By tower and tree.

    “No rush of the mournful waters
      Breaks on the ear,
    To tell us when Life is strongest,
      That Death flows near.

    “But through throbbing hearts of cities
      In the heat of the day,
    The cool, dark River passeth
      On its silent way.

    “This is the River that follows
      Wherever we go,
    No sand so dry and thirsty,
      But these strange waters flow.

    “Many waters go softly dreaming
      On to the sea,
    But the river of Death flows softest
      To Thee and me.

    “And the Lord’s voice on the waters
      Lingereth sweet,
    He that is washed needest only
      To wash his feet.”

CHAPTER XIII

THE LOVE THAT NEVER FAILS

      Go in peace, soul beautiful and blest!

    Yet high above the limits of our seeing,
      And folded far within the inmost heart,
    And deep below the deeps of conscious being,
      Thy splendor shineth!  There O God!  Thou art.

When John reached London it was in the gray misty dawning.  The streets were nearly deserted, and an air of melancholy hung over the long rows of low dwellings.  At Harlow House he saw at once that every window was shrouded, and he turned heartsick with the fear that he was too late.  A porter, whose eyes were red with weeping, admitted him, and there was an intolerable smell of drugs, the odor of which he recollected all the days of his future life.

“She is still alive, sir—­but very ill.”

John could not answer, but his look was so urgent and so miserable the man divined the hurry of heart and spirit that he was possessed by and without another word led him to the room where the child lay dying.  The struggle was nearly over and John was spared the awful hours of slow strangulation which had already done their work.  She was not insensible.  She held tight the hand of her mother, kneeling by her side, and gazed at John with eyes wearing a new, deep look as if a veil had been rent and she with