Yet in
his weakness the wish held him, and the tears ran down his face.
Then, as he lay there, feeling the earth slip from under him, and
the Everlasting Arms replace it, he heard a great peal of voices
that seemed to come down from the sky and mingle with the singing of
the throng; and the words of the chant were the words of his own
lauds, so long hidden in the secret of his breast, and now rejoicing
above him through the spheres. And his soul rose on the chant, and
soared with it to the seat of mercy.
THE LAST ASSET
I
"THE devil!" Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the
dry old gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the
quiet restaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile: "You
don't seem particularly annoyed at meeting him."
Garnett returned the smile. "I don't know why I apostrophized him,
for he's not in the least present--except inasmuch as he may prove
to be at the bottom of anything unexpected."
The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in
the thin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious
truths, twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out
shrewdly: "Ah, it's generally a woman who is at the bottom of the
unexpected.
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