“Thank God! Now I can go in peace.” Margaret had fallen on her knees by the bedside, and Thora leaned forward and kissed her.
“Shall I send for father?”
“He will come in time.”
A few hours afterward she said in a voice already far away, as if she had called back from a long distance, “When Jan returns be thou kinder to him, Margaret.”
“Will he come back? Mother, tell me!”
But there was no answer to the yearning cry. Never another word from the soul that had now cast earth behind it. Peter came home early, and stood gloomily and sorrowfully beside his companion. Just when the tide turned, he saw a momentary light flash over the still face, a thrill of joyful recognition, a sigh of peace, instantly followed by the pallor, and chill, and loneliness of death.
At the last the end had come suddenly. Peter had certainly known that his wife was dying, but he had not dreamed of her slipping off her mortal vesture so rapidly. He was shocked to find how much of his own life would go with her. Nothing could ever be again just as it had been. It troubled him also that there had been no stranger present. The minister ought to have been sent for, and some two or three of Thora’s old acquaintances. There was fresh food for suspicion in Thora Fae being allowed to pass out of life just at this time, 154 with none but her husband and daughter near, and without the consolation of religious rites.
Peter asked Margaret angrily, why she had neglected to send for friends and for the minister?
“Mother was no worse when thou went to the store this morning. About noon she fell asleep, and knew nothing afterward. It would have been cruel to disturb her.”