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when he comes to go.’
Philip saw that she was really fond of the old man. She
washed and dressed him, gave him his food, and was up
half a dozen times in the night; for she slept in the next
room to his and whenever he awoke he tinkled his little bell
till she came in. He might die at any moment, but he might
live for months. It was wonderful that she should look after
a stranger with such patient tenderness, and it was tragic
and pitiful that she should be alone in the world to care for
him.
It seemed to Philip that the religion which his uncle
had preached all his life was now of no more than formal
importance to him: every Sunday the curate came and ad-
ministered to him Holy Communion, and he often read his
Bible; but it was clear that he looked upon death with hor-
ror. He believed that it was the gateway to life everlasting,
but he did not want to enter upon that life. In constant pain,
chained to his chair and having given up the hope of ever
getting out into the open again, like a child in the hands of
a woman to whom he paid wages, he clung to the world he
knew.
In Philip’s head was a question he could not ask, because
he was aware that his uncle would never give any but a con-
ventional answer: he wondered whether at the very end,
now that the machine was painfully wearing itself out, the
clergyman still believed in immortality; perhaps at the bot-
tom of his soul, not allowed to shape itself into words in
case it became urgent, was the conviction that there was no
God and after this life nothing.