DR. GREENFIELD looked round his small study with satisfaction and a touch of pride. In spite of the book-cases filled with treatises on medicines and diseases, and the inevitable patient’s chair, the room still managed to be an attractive one. The book-cases were of oak; the dreaded chair lay claim to be a particularly good specimen of an early Sheraton; and over the chimney-piece, and on all available space of the soft green-colored walls hung good mezzotint prints in dark frames.

The servant put a match to the log-laid fire, for although it was May, there was an evening chill, and a sensation of damp.

The Doctor had dined early, with the expectation of a long drive, so his evening at home was unintentional, and caused by the little piece of pink paper which now lay unheeded at his feet. He stretched himself, felt how tired he was, and how luxurious was this unexpected evening at home. Then he remembered the cause and, with an involuntary movement, stooped and picked up the paper from where it lay. He opened it and read it again, though he had done so several times already.

A telegram so short, but he knew what it had meant to the sender of it; a lifelong message of despair, of shipwrecked hopes and utter loneliness. “Charlie died this evening.” Dr. Greenfield read it out loud quite slowly—and once more it fluttered to the ground, and he sighed. So it was all over; the eight weeks’ watching; the alternate hope and despair; the grim fight with death—and death had triumphed. He saw the girl, the sender of the message, standing as she had done when he told her that her brother must die. He thought of the weeks during which time he had been so much thrown with this girl—Juliet Carson—the days which they had spent together watching by the sick man’s bed, fighting the battle of skill and science with destiny.

And all the time his mind dwelt on it, he knew it did not really touch him—the worst part to him was that his science had failed him. For a moment he let himself believe that the constant facing death, which as a doctor he was bound to confront, had hardened his feelings, made him callous, and taken his sense of pity and sympathy from him; but he was too honest, and he remembered with a true flash of conviction that it had always been so, and memory took him back over many years, and he seemed to hear his nurse saying, “Master George has no heart, he didn’t feel his father’s death a bit.” And it came to him how right she had been, how he had wanted to care, but something wouldn’t let him; he could not cry as his brother did, and he had felt as if he belonged somewhere else. All his later life, too, he had known it. He had no sympathy, no pity, and he knew that others felt the want in him, though often they did not know what it was. He had lived for thirty-five years now, and he had never cared for anyone; and for the first time to-night, as he sat and looked into the fire, he knew that his life had been only half complete, that he lacked what was the best, and that his whole existence had been colourless. Still, as he argued against himself, if he had lacked the best, he had also missed the worst: many of his friends had gone; he had wanted to care, but the power was not there; he had seen piteous sights; he had witnessed heartrending scenes of poverty and despair, but they had all been nothing to him; they had passed by, and he had forgotten.

Somehow the image of Juliet to-night came back to him; the girl in her sorrow and loneliness with no one left to her; and he wondered why his heart was not wrung with pity. Although she did not stir his heart, or his senses, he could see she was beautiful; but for some other man, not for him. A new and painful sensation of loneliness suddenly swept over him, a horrible whiff of middle age, a foretaste of the solitude of old age, which must overtake him, but he could do nothing to help himself, he had no will, no power. He sat on in his deep reverie, with his eyes fixed on the burning logs. Then he got up from his chair and went to the window and looked out on the May evening.

It was half-past eight o’clock, and the chill which comes just after sunset was in the air. He stood looking into the clear blue distance, listening to the nightingales and the hum of the bees. Then suddenly he saw a sight which astonished him—a procession winding its way down the long avenue of limes which faced his window: a curious procession, too—a funeral—it was unlike any he had seen before. It gave him a strange sensation. Preceding it were men and women, chanting as they went.

They paused as they came near to him, the singing ceased, and several made a gesture as if they would ask him to join them; then they drew back as he heard one say, “Ah, not him; he knows no pity, he has no love, he cannot come;” and they passed on, taking up their chant; and for the first time in his life he knew he was an outcast and a pariah. He was hungering and thirsting for someone to help him and pity him.

Behind them came men carrying the body of the dead man, and he bowed as they went by. Once more he looked, and he saw three figures—three white-robed women, walking together. And the one who walked in the midst had the eyes of Juliet Carson, and in her hands she held a large cup. The three paused as they came near to him, and it seemed to him as if a veil fell between the rest of the procession and them, the music got fainter, and he was left alone with these three; something within him told him that they held in that cup the power of pity and love, that they alone could give them to him, and he cried to them to take pity on him. Then Juliet, for it was Juliet, spoke to him; her eyes were troubled, though her face shone with a radiant smile, and her voice came to him as a soft wind, and stilled his despair and restlessness.

“Listen,” she said, “and know what you ask. We are three sisters, Love, Joy, and Sorrow, and if you drink of this cup you can never again be as you were. You would wish, likely, to take only Love and Joy, but as love brings joy, so also it surely brings sorrow, and you cannot take one without the other. Say, will you take Love, and in so doing accept Joy and Sorrow as they come?” and she paused while he made his choice.

But with eager, trembling hands he took the cup she offered him and drank thirstily, and then—his whole being was flooded with hope and delight, and as he handed the cup back to Juliet in her radiant form of love, she bent forward a little and kissed him—a kiss which thrilled his soul, and sent the life-blood rushing through his veins. Then the figures vanished. Once more he heard the faint sound of distant music, and then—and then * * *

The Doctor straightened himself in his chair, and looked round him in a dazed, bewildered manner.

“A dream,” he murmured. “Is it possible? I, too, of all men.”

He looked round him. The May morning was breaking into his room, the birds were singing, the sun was up. So then he had fallen asleep in his chair, and all that seemed so real, so tangible, was nothing but a dream—a dream of possibilities, and an awakening to realities.

As his mind grew clearer, he remembered all that had taken place the night before—ah! that telegram was the reality; and once more he stooped to pick it up. But, as he read it, a new feeling, and yet not a new feeling came to him—the sensation of his dream. It made him giddy, and he went to the window to steady himself, and to feel the air. But in him, and all around him, he was conscious of a change; a rush of almost divine pity and love swept across him. Ah! that, then, was no dream; he was in touch with the love, the sorrow, and pity of the world; he shared them all; he was one of them, he was no longer the pariah, the outcast; and more than that, he too loved, and his love had been alone with her suffering and sorrow all night. Last night he had not cared; to-day the pity of it almost stifled him.

He threw up the window and stepped onto the lawn; the fresh dew was upon everything, and he stretched himself in the rays of the sun, and thanked God that he was alive. He looked long up the avenue, where in his dream he had seen the procession come down, and he shuddered when he thought how they had left him—no, not all—and his heart beat as he thought of Juliet Carson, and how she had come to him at the time of his great want. And the thought of her brought back to him the reality and the present, and, as he listened to the clock striking six, he knew that his restlessness must wait; he who had waited all his life was now impatient for two hours to be over. Ah! had it come to this. He smiled at his own impetuosity, but had not the heart to rebuke himself.

He spent the next two hours wandering up and down his garden, listening to the morning sounds, as the world woke bit by bit to its day’s work. He watched the workmen pass by his gate on their way to take up their daily toil, and he wondered why he had never pitied them—his had been so much more a case of pity. Though worn and tired, and perhaps saddened, they, too, had loved; they had somewhere, sometime, romance in their lives.

As the church clock struck eight he made his way to the stables and ordered his dog-cart. His own voice had a conscious sound in it, and he felt all the world must know he was a changed man. As he drove through the deep lanes, with the honeysuckle, pink may, and wild cherry blossom all in their beauty before him, he felt that there was only life, only beauty in the world, and all the sorrowful and sad side of it had fled away. But as he neared the old manor house, where death triumphed, his beating heart quietened somewhat, and he felt a touch of sorrow come over him.

He was evidently expected, for he was admitted at once into the long low room, into which the sun was pouring. The window was thrown up, and as he paused he felt that the stillness of death was in the house. Then he heard a slight movement and turned. At the open window stood Juliet, the sun’s rays lighting up her white gown, and her brown hair; her eyes had the troubled expression of his dream, but there was no radiance in the sad, weary, little face. In her hands she held great branches of white lilacs, lilies, and roses.

He went to meet her with outstretched hand, and a great pity in his heart spiritualizing his human love.

“I knew,” she said simply; “I knew you would come.” Had she, too, seen the vision, or was it in his face?

And did she bend her head as in his dream?—for his lips found hers, and that kiss drew the bitterness from her sorrow, while it opened up his new life for him, sweeping away all the years he had left behind, and flooding his soul with light and love.

And although they were in the presence of death, did not love triumph?

Lady Mabel Howard.