Her grand head was raised; her soft gray eyes shone again undimmed by tears.
The storm of emotion had swept over her and had passed away A sad tranquillity was in her face; a gentle resignation was in her voice.
The calm of a martyr was the calm that confronted him as she spoke her last words.
"A woman who has lived my life, a woman who has suffered what I have suffered, may love you—as I love you—but she must not be your wife.
That place is too high above her.
Any other place is too far below her and below you."
She paused, and advancing to the bell, gave the signal for her departure.
That done, she slowly retraced her steps until she stood at Julian's side.
Tenderly she lifted his head and laid it for a moment on her bosom. Silently she stooped and touched his forehead with her lips. All the gratitude that filled her heart and all the sacrifice that rent it were in those two actions—so modestly, so tenderly performed!
As the last lingering pressure of her fingers left him, Julian burst into tears.
The servant answered the bell.
At the moment he opened the door a woman's voice was audible in the hall speaking to him.
"Let the child go in," the voice said. "I will wait here."
The child appeared—the same forlorn little creature who had reminded Mercy of her own early years on the day when she and Horace Holmcroft had been out for their walk.
There was no beauty in this child; no halo of romance brightened the commonplace horror of her story.
She came cringing into the room, staring stupidly at the magnificence all round her—the daughter of the London streets! the pet creation of the laws of political economy! the savage and terrible product of a worn-out system of government and of a civilization rotten to its core!
Cleaned for the first time in her life, fed sufficiently for the first time in her life, dressed in clothes instead of rags for the first time in her life, Mercy's sister in adversity crept fearfully over the beautiful carpet, and stopped wonder-struck before the marbles of an inlaid table—a blot of mud on the splendor of the room.
Mercy turned from Julian to meet the child.
The woman's heart, hungering in its horrible isolation for something that it might harmlessly love, welcomed the rescued waif of the streets as a consolation sent from God.
She caught the stupefied little creature up in her arms.
"Kiss me!" she whispered, in the reckless agony of the moment. "Call me sister!"
The child stared, vacantly.
Sister meant nothing to her mind but an older girl who was strong enough to beat her.
She put the child down again, and turned for a last look at the man whose happiness she had wrecked—in pity to him.
He had never moved.
His head was down; his face was hidden.
She went back to hi m a few steps.
"The others have gone from me without one kind word.
Can you forgive me?"
He held out his hand to her without looking up.
Sorely as she had wounded him, his generous nature understood her.
True to her from the first, he was true to her still.
"God bless and comfort you," he said, in broken tones.
"The earth holds no nobler woman than you."
She knelt and kissed the kind hand that pressed hers for the last time.
"It doesn't end with this world," she whispered: "there is a better world to come!"
Then she rose, and went back to the child.
Hand in hand the two citizens of the Government of God—outcasts of the government of Man—passed slowly down the length of the room. Then out into the hall. Then out into the night.
The heavy clang of the closing door tolled the knell of their departure.
They were gone.
But the orderly routine of the house—inexorable as death—pursued its appointed course.
As the clock struck the hour the dinner-bell rang.
An interval of a minute passed, and marked the limit of delay.
The butler appeared at the dining-room door.
"Dinner is served, sir."
Julian looked up.
The empty room met his eyes.
Something white lay on the carpet close by him.
It was her handkerchief—wet with her tears.
He took it up and pressed it to his lips.