"I don't remember—Oh!"
"Yes—that one. But if you consented, I might recover—it would be enough to make me; then you would repent."
She was silent, agitated in every fibre of her, but thinking hard.
"What put that idea into your head?" she whispered, still holding his hand.
"It was never put in; it was there always—since you were a kiddie."
"It seems so strange! I thought I was always a kiddie to you." "That does seem the natural relationship, doesn't it?" There fell another long silence, and, listening to his dragging breath, her heart smote her. She squeezed his bony hand.
"I will stay with you, anyway," she comforted him.
He turned his head on the pillow. "Kiss me," he sighed, with eyes closed.
She did, again and again.
The night was suffocating. She could not sleep for the heat and her thoughts, and when, towards morning, she heard the nurse stirring, she got up to inquire how he was.