“Wait! What’s that?” She stood a moment, her finger raised, listening intently. Then she straightened her bowed body and looked up at him. One so seldom saw her face lifted, shone upon by any light, that that alone, I suppose, was enough to change her. For changed she was—her countenance so wise and beaming that I hardly knew her. “Now I know,” she said, “she will come. Wait for her, Kent. She will come. I—I hear her coming. She’s not so far from us. She’s not so far away.”
They stared at each other for a moment, the man and the old woman. Then her face dropped forward again, downward into its accustomed shadow, as he said to her—
“It’s too late, Mrs. Serle. She won’t come—now. Not now any more. And Anita thinks—truly you’re very tired, aren’t you? Now, aren’t you?”
“Very tired,” she quavered.
“I know you are. Won’t you let me help you upstairs?”
“And stay a bit?” she said, clutching at him. “Stay and talk to me?”
“Yes, yes,” he humoured her.
“About Madala?”
He was very white.
“About Madala. Anita, take her other arm. That’s the way.”