At his feet, on the ground, sits Margaret.
Our Margaret? Yes; although you would not have believed, had you only your own eyes to trust for confirmation. Her flesh is so colourless that every drop of blood seems to have left her body; but your imagination will supply a better picture of this hapless broken-hearted young creature than my pen can draw. On the low bed by which she is sitting, with misery and despair in her heart and face, lies a blackened mass which once was Philip, which is Philip still for a few brief hours.
For he was not dead when Mr. Hart dragged him from the flaming walls; the life had not been quite burnt out of him; but he was dying fast now. "Before the sun rises," said the doctors, with sad meaning in their voices. It was most merciful that it should be so; for had he lived the full span of man's life he would never again have seen the light, nor could any person have looked upon his face without a shudder of pain.
They could do nothing for him except to shed upon him the light of their pitiful love; and blackened and burnt as he was, this sweet and divine compassion, in some strange way, reached his senses, and if his lips could be said to smile, they smiled in grateful acknowledgment. "Poor Philip! Poor soul! Dear, dearest love!" they murmured, and their words were not lost. They were to him as water, cold and sweet and clear, is to a parched mouth. Even in the darkness through which he was struggling blind, impotent, helpless, glimpses of delicious light broke upon his suffering soul.
A hundred times Margaret was on the point of giving way, but Mr. Hart whispered to her:
"Be strong, my dear child, be strong! Your voice is to him as the dew to a flower."
"As the dew to a flower!" she murmured. "My flower! The only one! God pity him! God pity me! He was my life, and he is going."
"To another world, dear child," he said to her, in a beautiful soft voice, "where we shall join him in God's good time."
And as though he had a thing to do which was necessary for Philip's comfort, the old man went swiftly out of the tent, and groaned and wept there, where Margaret could not see him. Then raised his eyes from the earth, and mutely prayed that peace might come to Margaret's troubled soul.
She, moistening Philip's lips with pure spring water, never moved from her husband's side, and prayed that she might die with him. "If God is merciful," she thought, "He will take me also."