Her Last Stake, Chapters I-V [pp. 815-839]

HER LAST STAKE.
"What is left to me but to do what the fever failed to do?
I am thinking over it, every day as I sit here, trying to decide
how it is to be. Will it be poison? That is very painful-and
besides, I shall have no hole of shelter to crawl into to die;
one can't die out in the open street. Will it be the sea? I
don't like the sea; it is shallow and difficult to reach, and one
is ignominiously rescued. I am not a man, and I have not the
stereotyped revolver of Monte Carlo usage; so-"
"Oh, please!" gasped Sister Gabrielle, "don't talk like that.
I know you don't mean it, but "
"Not mean it? " returned the other with a grim little smile,
which somehow carried conviction with it. "Well, I hope the
proprietor will'not mean it' when he turns me out into the
streets, in a day or two. Perhaps you will kindly make that
remark to him?"
Sister Gabrielle stood dumbly looking at her for a moment,
feeling as if no words were adequate to touch that profound
despair. Suddenly her hand, moving mechanically downwards,
encountered the rosary at her side, and with an impulsive movement she unfastened and laid it upon Miss Falconer's lap; then,
putting both arms round her neck, she kissed the unresponsive
cheek; and turning, hurried from the room.
CHAPTER IV.
In very truth Sister Gabrielle did not in the least guess at
her former patient's past or even present life. The ravings of
fever, the pencil notes and jottings lying here and there, every
indication which would have enlightened a more "worldly" person, passed by her unnoticed and uncomprehended. All that
she did take in, however, of the poor wanderer's pitiful and
solitary state made her yearn, with the tenderness of a true
womanly soul, over that forlorn one to whom by some mysterious overruling of Divine Mercy she had been brought to minister. In after years she used to say that she had never realized
until then the terrible inequality of rich and poor against which
so many thousands have impotently and wrongly rebelled. In
one room sunshine, and comfort, and love-all combining to
make human suffering light-in the other poverty, want, despair;
within a stone's throw, each to each. And in both rooms the
same great, underlying need which, if supplied, would have enriched and ennobled both-the same lack of faith and God.
The mission of those who have devoted their lives to the
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[Mar.,