Four Gates by Amy Le Feuvre

"One last long sigh to love and thee, Then back to busy life again. " BYRON.

VERY gradually, but surely, Mrs. Erskine grew worse, so gradually that Pauline hardly realised the decline day by day. She left her mother less and less, for Mrs. Erskine became restless and irritable, and never seemed comfortable if Pauline were out of the room. The doctor strongly advised a nurse, but this Mrs. Erskine resisted as long as she had strength to do so.

"You are killing your daughter," the doctor said to her one day. "It is against human nature to go without sleep. She gets no rest by day or night."

"If you come up to my room to fight me, I will not have you visit me at all," said the sick woman.

But as her strength waned, she grew gentler, and when the nurse was at last established, she hardly noticed her. She became unconscious, and only had short intervals when she knew her daughter. One of these-the last one-was a very precious one to Pauline.

"Pauline," she murmured, "are you there?"

In an instant, Pauline was bending over her.

"I thought I saw your father in the room."

"Did you, mother dear?"

"I think-I feel-very ill. You have been a good daughter. There's one thing I'm sorry for-but I can't remember what it is. It comes to me in the night. You are in it-but I only know I'm sorry."

Pauline had never heard the expression "I'm sorry" on her mother's lips before.

She bent and kissed her tenderly.

"It is all right, mother dear; don't think about it. Are you comfortable? Shall I read you a few verses from the Bible?"

"Yes, at once."

Mrs. Erskine's eyes looked up pathetically into her daughter's. She was fast slipping away into the silent land, and seemed to know it.

Pauline took her mother's Bible which usually lay on the little table near the bed.

Mrs. Erskine's religion had always been a silent, reserved one, but she never failed to have a portion from her Bible read to her when she could not read it herself. Pauline began to read the hundred and third Psalm. When she came to the verse,-

"He hath not dealt with us after our sins,-"

Mrs. Erskine put up her hand.

"That's enough," she said. "Ask Him to make that true."