"Oh!"
There followed a silence for a little while. Lassie was much impressed by the statement just made. Of course it wouldn't be polite to repeat to Alva, but it was very interesting to know, oneself. The road ran sweetly, greenly on before them, all strewn with piney needles. There was no sound except a little breeze rustling overhead, and the occasional fall of an acorn or pine-cone.
"How does Alva's story affect you, now?" the man asked, suddenly.
"Differently from at first. When she first told me what she meant to do, it just pounded in my ears that he was going to die in that very house over there; and that they would have to carry him into it just as they would later carry him out of it. Oh, it did seem so terrible to think of this winter, and of her, sitting there beside him,—so terrible—so terrible!"
"And doesn't it seem terrible at all to you now?"
"Not in the same way. She has talked to me so much; she has made me know so much more of her way of looking at it. You know—"she hesitated a little—"she feels about death so strangely,—it doesn't seem to count to her at all. She feels that in some way he will be always near her; she says that he promised her not to leave her again."
"Poor Alva!"
"I suppose that he is such a very great man that he can affect one like that. I am beginning to see what very different kinds of people there are in the world."
"Thank God for that!" Ingram exclaimed.
"Alva says that he is one of the greatest men that ever lived. She says that to share even a few days of life with a man who has been a world-force for the world-betterment, would overpay all the hardship and loneliness to come."