"You will draw them up presently."

"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him steadily, "if I could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I have tried, but I can't."

The Bishop's cheek paled a little.

"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank.

He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting on to a lee shore.

"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last year," said Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I think I mean concentration. That means holding your mind to one place, doesn't it? Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I can't fix it to anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for a few minutes if I hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, and directly I am alone, or you leave off speaking, my mind gets loose from my body and wanders away to an immense distance, to long, dreary, desert places. And then if you come in I make a great effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, because if I don't you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, do you?—because I've explained about them, and holding them open does tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And—my mind gets farther and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel won't think I am giving way if—sometime—I really can't bring it back any longer."

"Dear Hester, no."

"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, that is all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, but I don't now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while I'm lying still. I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to be glad or sorry about anything any more."

Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows.

The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at hand, and then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious of his presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out silently, and returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to hear the result of the interview.

"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After forty years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond human aid—at least, she is beyond mine."

"You think she will die?"

"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am certain it might be prevented."

"You could not rouse her?"

"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not to say it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her mind and that of other people is so thin that she sees what they are thinking about. Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with the artistic temperament! That is why she has never married. She sees too much. I am not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the responsibility, I should have married her at seventeen to Lord Newhaven."