“He has his reputation; they said he could help me if anybody could. He
thought at first he could. But to-day--Mary, see here.”
She walked feebly towards the window, where a faint, gray light
struggled in, and opened the bosom of her dress....
There was silence between us for a long while after that; she went back
to the sofa, and I took her hand and bowed my face over it, and so we
sat.
The leaves rustled out of doors. Faith, up stairs, was singing herself
to sleep with a droning sound.
“He talked of risking an operation,” she said, at length, “but decided
to-day that it was quite useless. I suppose I must give up and be sick
now; I am feeling the reaction from having kept up so long. He thinks I
shall not suffer a very great deal. He thinks he can relieve me, and
that it may be soon over.”
“There is no chance?”
“No chance.”
I took both of her hands, and cried out, I believe, as I did that first
night when she spoke to me of Roy,--“Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” and tried
to think what I was doing, but only cried out the more.
“Why, Mary!” she said,--“why, Mary!” and again, as before, she passed
her soft hand to and fro across my hair, till by and by I began to
think, as I had thought before, that I could bear anything which God
who loved us all--who _surely_ loved us all--should send.
So then, after I had grown still, she began to tell me about it in her
quiet voice, and the leaves rustled, and Faith had sung herself to
sleep, and I listened wondering. For there was no pain in the quiet
voice,--no pain, nor tone of fear. Indeed, it seemed to me that I
detected, through its subdued sadness, a secret, suppressed buoyancy of
satisfaction, with which something struggled.
“And you?” I asked, turning quickly upon her.
“I should thank God with all my heart, Mary, if it were not for Faith
and you. But it _is_ for Faith and you. That’s all.”
When I had locked the front door, and was creeping up here to my room,
my foot crushed something, and a faint, wounded perfume came up. It was
the little pink and purple chain.