"Then drink this," urged the doctor, "or she will wake."
So she drank it, and, as he expected, it roused her a little from her dead slumber.
"It is too late for me," she said half to herself, as if continuing something she had been saying in her dream; "I never gave it a thought before, and now it is too late, too late."
Oh the mournful sound of those dreadful words in that plaintive voice!
"If your baby had fallen into the river, and you could pull it out, would you stop on the bank, and say it was 'too late'?" asked the doctor earnestly.
"No!" said the woman. "At least, not if it fell in alone, and I was safe on the shore."
"Supposing it was in a burning house, and you could still rush up the staircase, would you wring your hands at the bottom, and say it was 'too late' to rescue it?"
"No, no!" exclaimed the woman, now fully awake, and turning to clasp her baby to her breast. "No, no, never while I could get to it. My baby! My baby!"
"Ah, then, it is not too late for you. You are drowning, you are in a burning house; but Jesus has come to seek you, to save you. Oh, stretch out your arms to Him now, my dear! Do, or you will be lost."
The woman looked in the face of her babe earnestly and longingly, with unspeakable yearning, and at last she whispered, "Did you say we might be separated after all?"