He stopped in his restless pacing, and looked down kindly at his wife’s shivering form. “Shall I shut the windows?” he asked.
“No,” she answered; “never mind. Oh, Roger, do you think she will die? I can’t bear it! Oh, why doesn’t he come?”
She got up and clutched her husband’s coat-sleeve, hiding her face on his shoulder. “Roger, I couldn’t bear her to die.”
Never before had the great presence of Death really come near to her, except to summon the very old whose life had already almost passed to the other side. And now, suddenly, like a bolt out of a serene blue sky, it was standing beside her, imminent, threatening, and, to her, unspeakably terrible.
Roger North put an awkward arm round her. He felt uncomfortably stiff and useless, and ridiculously conscious of the fact that she had forgotten in her hurry and distress to take her hair out of the curler at the back of her neck.
He was honestly anxious to be sympathetic, to be all that was kind and helpful. His own anxiety racked him, and yet, absurdly enough, that curler obtruded itself on his notice until he found himself saying, “You have left one of your curlers in.”
He was acutely aware that it was about the last thing he should have said and wholly unsuitable to the moment, but his wife, fortunately, took no such view.
“It just shows the state of my mind!” she exclaimed, trying with shaking fingers to disentangle it. “I have never done such a thing in my life before! What a mercy you noticed it!”
He helped her to get the little instrument out, and put it in his pocket.
There was the sound of a closing door above, the hurried movement of feet, and Mrs. North clutched her husband’s arm. They both looked towards the door. But silence fell again, and she began to cry.