It was the voice, the accent and the words again of Mrs. LeVallon.
“Not for ever,” I whispered, “but for a little time.”
She rose up like a figure of white death, taking my hand. She did not tremble, and her step was firm. And more than this I never heard her say, for the entire contents of the interval since she first fell asleep beneath her husband’s passes had gone beyond recall.
“Take me to him,” she said gently. “I want to say good-bye.”
I led her up those creaking wooden stairs and left her with her dead.
Her strength was wonderful. I can never forget the quiet self-control she showed through all the wretched details that the situation then entailed. She asked no questions, shed no tears, moving brave and calm through all the ghastly duties. Something in her that lay deeper than death understood, and with the resignation of a truly great heart, accepted. Far stronger than myself she was; and, indeed, it seemed that my pain for her—at the time anyhow—absorbed the suffering that made my own heart ache with a sense of loss that has ever since left me empty and bereaved. Only in her eyes was there betrayal of sorrow that was itself, perhaps, another half revival of yet dimmer memories ... “eyes in which desire of some strange thing unutterably burned, unquenchable....” For the first time I understood the truth of another’s words—so like a statue was her appearance, so set in stone, her words so sparing and her voice so dead:
“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access