“My dear, you couldn’t have done anything,” she said.  “It is just the weakness before the end, and we can do nothing to avert it.  What about her mother?  Can she come?”

Avery shook her head in despair.  “Not for a week.”

“Ah!” the nurse said; and that was all.  But Avery knew in that moment that only a few hours more remained ere little Jeanie Lorimer passed through the Open Gates.

She would not go to bed that night though the child lay wholly unconscious of her.  She knew that she could not sleep.

She did not see Piers again till late.  The nurse slipped down to tell him of Jeanie’s condition, and he came up, white and sternly composed, and stood for many minutes watching the slender, quick-breathing figure that lay propped among pillows, close to the open window.

Avery could not look at his face during those minutes; she dared not.  But when he turned away at length he bent and spoke to her.

“Are you going to stay here?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He made no attempt to dissuade her.  All he said was, “May I wait in your room?  I shall be within call there.”

“Of course,” she answered.

“And you will call me if there is any change?”

“Of course,” she said again.

He nodded briefly and left her.

Then began the long, long night-watch.  It was raining, and the night was very dark.  The slow, deep roar of the sea rose solemnly and filled the quiet room.  The tide was coming in.  They could hear the water shoaling along the beach.

How often Avery had listened to it and loved the sound!  To-night it filled her soul with awe, as the Voice of Many Waters.

Slowly the night wore on, and ever that sound increased in volume, swelling, intensifying, like the coming of a mighty host as yet far off.  The rain pattered awhile and ceased.  The sea-breeze blew in, salt and pure.  It stirred the brown tendrils of hair on Jeanie’s forehead, and eddied softly through the room.

The nurse sat working beside a hooded lamp that threw her grave, strong face into high relief, but only accentuated the shadows in the rest of the room.  Avery sat close to the bed, not praying, scarcely thinking, waiting only for the opening of the Gates.  And in that hour she longed,—­oh, how passionately!—­that when they opened she also might be permitted to pass through.

It was in the darkest hour of the night that the tide began to turn.  She looked almost instinctively for a change but none came.  Jeanie stirred not, save when the nurse stooped over her to give her nourishment, and each time she took less and less.

The tide receded.  The night began to pass.  There came a faint greyness before the window.  The breeze freshened.

And very suddenly the breathing to which Avery had listened all the night paused, ceased for a second or two, then broke into the sharp sigh of one awaking from sleep.