I. A. R. Wylie

“ Colonel Mowbray lay and stared into the darkness. He did not know that his eyes were open. He had lost all consciousness of his own condition. As in a horrible nightmare, he seemed to have left himself behind and to be watching, helpless and wretched, a scene in which life and death fought out a last desperate battle.
He heard soft, hurried steps, low whispers; he saw a shaded light burning on the table, the doctor bending over the white bed, a pale face thrown back upon the pillow, all its young, tender beauty overcast by the growing shadow. She was dying. ”

“ The tiny glimmer cast weird, fantastic shadows over the walls, and with a suppressed shudder she lit the green-shaded office lamp and lifted it high above her head. There was a draft somewhere—as if a window had been left open—and the cold air brushed dankly against her cheeks, sending a chill of fear to her very soul.
She went on, up the narrow stairs whose stealthy creaking alone broke the haunted silence. It was as if the ghosts of all those who had worked, and striven, and suffered in these old offices watched her. At the end of the first landing, a steel-lined door blocked her progress. ”

“ It was a relief to know that Edstein at least had some glimmering of the truth. It saved him the effort of wearily explaining what they would never understand. He heard them talking—whispering, it seemed to his fading senses—and then footsteps—swift and light and yet to him loud and tragic as the tramp of a relieving force that had come too late,
Margaret—Margaret. It was like a knife turning in his wound. A simple and human demand for happiness kindled in him for the last time. And he had lost everything. He had had one life—one chance—and he had thrown them away. ”

“ One little event trod on the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to an avalanche.
Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their daily life. He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been torn out the bridge between them crumbled.
It had been a day full of bitterness—of set-backs, which to Robert Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They were the outward expressions of his disorder. He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was weakening. ”

“ I have been patient through all the dirt and squalor of our lives. It was hard to be patient, for I wasn't used to such things. I have seen our money flung away on drunkards and humbugs who fooled you and laughed at you behind your back. I have fought out the problem of our daily bread. I have seen you ill. And I tell you, I have borne it all, and would have borne it to the bitter end but for this hope of salvation—yes, salvation, Geoffrey! It is like a breath of fresh air in a dungeon, a note of music out of an old song, a call from a world to which I belong, body and soul. ”

“ And now the silence and the chill suspense broke upon Little Nicholas like a wave. He wanted to cry out, but the invisible terror choked him. He slipped down behind the curtain burying his face in his arms, crying silently.
The door opened. The old serving woman came first carrying candles, whose star-light fought weakly with the dank gloom. Then came a tall, strongly-built man in a grey cloak on which the wet snow still sparkled. He carried his cloth-covered helmet in his hand, and his face was like a face carved out of weather-stained wood. ”