August 13, 1889.
He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all hope was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing my prayers were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw him back. Maud took my place at midnight; I slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her standing with a candle by my bed; I knew in a moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No word passed between us; I found Maggie by the bed; and we three together waited for the end. I had never seen any one die. He was quite unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle himself for the last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became aware that life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own—while I was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the deep.