This was all the more strange because the way to the satisfaction of the irrepressible hunger of his heart was now open.  Pepeeta’s husband was dead, and although he was not innocent of a great crime, he was at least not a murderer.  Pepeeta still loved him, if she were still alive.  Of this he had no more doubt than of his love for her.  Why then did he thus give up to despair?  Why did he not fly to her arms and claim from life that happiness which had hitherto escaped his grasp?

He did not try to solve these problems, nor to comprehend his own despair.  He only knew that he had been baffled at every turn of his life by powers with which he was unable to cope, and that he was tired of the struggle.  He would give himself up to the mighty stream of events and be borne along.  If he was exercising any volition in the choice of the path he was following, he was doing it unconsciously.  That path was leading him direct to the harbor.  It was a pathway well-worn by tired feet like his own.

The miserable creatures who had preceded him seemed to have formed a sort of wake by which he was being drawn along to that “wandering grave” in the deep sea.  At last he reached the water’s edge, and started as he heard the waves splashing among the wooden piles.  The soft, sibilant sounds seemed like kisses on the lips of the victims of their treacherous caresses.

The deed of which they whispered seemed but the logical conclusion of his entire career.  He put his foot upon the edge of the wharf and looked down into the dark abyss.

It was at this critical instant that his faithful friend extended his hand to save him; but at the same instant another and mightier hand was also extended from the sky.

From a remote part of the Battery a sound cut the silent air.  It was a human voice, masculine, powerful, tender and pleading, lifted in a sacred song.  That sound was the first element of the objective world which had penetrated the consciousness of the tortured and desperate would-be suicide.

He turned and listened—­and as he did so, Mantel sprang back among the shadows just in time to escape his observation.  The full-throated music, floating on the motionless air, fell upon his ear like a benediction.  He listened, and caught the words of a hymn with which he had been familiar in his childhood: 

     “Light of those whose dreary dwelling
     Borders on the shades of death! 
     Rise on us, thy love revealing,
     Dissipate the clouds beneath. 
     Thou of heaven and earth creator—­
     In our deepest darkness rise,
     Scattering all the night of nature,
     Pouring day upon our eyes.”

By the spell of this mysterious music he was drawn back into the living world—­drawn as if by some powerful magnet.

Pain and sorrow had become tired of vexing him at last, and now stretched forth their hands in a ministry of consolation.  With his eyes fixed on the spot from which the music issued, he moved unconsciously toward it, Mantel following him.