is the crisis. Perhaps—” her face hardened into granite again. She said no more.
Coker came in and went at once, without speaking, to the sick-room. Shortly before nine o’clock Bessie Gant came down.
“All right,” she said quietly. “You had all better come up now. This is the end.”
Eliza got up and marched out of the room with a stolid face. Helen followed her: she was panting with hysteria, and had begun to wring her big hands.
“Now, get hold of yourself, Helen,” said Bessie Gant warningly. “This is no time to let yourself go.”
Eliza went steadily upstairs, making no noise. But, as she neared the room, she paused, as if listening for sounds within. Faintly, in the silence, they heard Ben’s song. And suddenly, casting away all pretense, Eliza staggered, and fell against the wall, turning her face into her hand, with a terrible wrenched cry:
“O God! If I had known! If I had known!”
Then, weeping with bitter unrestraint, with the contorted and ugly grimace of sorrow, mother and daughter embraced each other. In a moment they composed themselves, and quietly entered the room.
Eugene and Luke pulled Gant to his feet and supported him up the stairs. He sprawled upon them, moaning in long quivering exhalations.
“Mer-ci-ful God! That I should have to bear this in my old age. That I should—”
“Papa! For God’s sake!” Eugene cried sharply. “Pull yourself together! It’s Ben who’s dying—not us! Let’s try to behave decently to him for once.”
This served to quiet Gant for a moment. But as he entered the room, and saw Ben lying in the semi-conscious coma that precedes death, the fear of his own death overcame him, and he began to moan again. They seated him in a chair, at the foot of the bed, and he rocked back and forth, weeping:
“O Jesus! I can’t bear it! Why must you put this upon me? I’m old and sick, and I don’t know where the money’s to come from. How are
