Then I rose.
At my urgent request, he explained to me fully and clearly the whole truth. It was, as most truths are, less terrible when wholly known. It had involved little suffering as yet, the paroxysms being few and rare. They had always occurred when he was alone, or when feeling them coming on he could go away and bear them in solitude.
"I have always been able to do so until to-night. She has not the least idea—my wife, I mean."
His voice failed.
"It has been terrible to me at times, the thought of my wife. Perhaps I ought to have told her. Often I resolved I would, and then changed my mind. Latterly, since she has been ill, I have believed, almost hoped, that she would not need to be told at all."
"Would you rather, then, that she—"
John calmly took up the word I shrank from uttering. "Yes; I would rather of the two that she went away first. She would suffer less, and it would be such a short parting."
He spoke as one would speak of a new abode, an impending journey. To him the great change, the last terror of humanity, was a thought—solemn indeed, but long familiar and altogether without fear. And, as we sat there, something of his spirit passed into mine; I felt how narrow is the span between the life mortal and the life immortal—how, in truth, both are one with God.
"Ay," he said, "that is exactly what I mean. To me there is always something impious in the 'preparing for death' that people talk about; as if we were not continually, whether in the flesh or out of it, living in the Father's presence; as if, come when He will, the Master should not find all of us watching? Do you remember saying so to me, one day?"
Ah, that day!