Many had
been the tired silent ones whose eyes she had closed, and whose limbs
she had washed against their last resting place. They were so helpless
now; they could do nothing any more for themselves.
Later in the day, Henry came again and sat long by the dead man's side.
It seemed uncompanionable to have grown thus suddenly afraid of him, to
leave him thus alone in that still room. And as he sat and watched him,
he gave to his memory a solemn service of faithful thought. Thus it was
he went over again the words in which Gerard had made him the
depository, the legatee, of his most sacred possession.
Gerard had evidently had some presentiment of his approaching end.
"I am going," he had said, "to place the greatest confidence in you one
man can place in another, pay you the greatest compliment. I shall die
some day, and something tells me that that divine event is not very far
off. Now I have no one in the world who cares an old 'J' pen for me, and
a new one is perhaps about as much as I care for any one--with one
exception, and that is a woman whom I shall never see again.
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