But her frail hand detained him.
"Sit down, Billy," she was whispering. "No, kneel—there—where I can see you. Keep hold of me."
He knelt at her feet, and she bowed her head upon his shoulder. He put her back gently into her chair, again with the determination to get the brandy; but her face forbade him.
"Florrie!" he called loudly.
No one answered. With the keenness of the shocked intelligence, summoned to record the smallest things with the same faithfulness as the large, he noted how the bees were humming in the garden. He and the bees were alive, but his old friend was dead.
XXXIII
In the hushed interval after Madam Fulton had died and Billy Stark had gone away sadly, knowing he should return to America no more, Osmond went to find Rose. He had seen her briefly, in the common ways of life, but it was evident to her that they were not to meet alone. Perhaps his mind had fixed itself inexorably against her, she thought, and he meant to see her only to say good-by. But even that contented her, if it must be. The splendor of their understanding abode with her and made his will seem easy. When the tide of new love went down, it would be another thing; but now it was at the flood, and the light of heaven shone in it.
He came walking through the garden, and she saw him come. Grannie sat out there among the hollyhocks, waiting for Peter. He had left his painting to bring her a glass of water from the house, and she rested in a somnolent calm. Grannie liked the sunshine, and to-day it was opulent and flooding. To Osmond, looking at her as he came, her serenity seemed even majestic. She had forgotten the world, he saw, and a smile brooded upon her face, that face where no evil passions had ever dwelt, and where peace had lain like a visible sign for many years. As he passed her portrait, he glanced at it in proud wonder because Peter had done it. To Osmond it looked complete as it was, and he found it another and only less beautiful grannie in the garden, with an added touch of life upon the face, something that did not lie there every day. It was a shade of sadness in the midst of the tranquillity, as if grannie also, in spite of her calm, had known great hungers. It tempered her childlike quality and made what might be called her character as enduring as time that had wrought it. She opened her eyes, when he neared her, and her smile came, the one that was for him alone and never failed him.
"What were you thinking about, grannie?" he asked her.