“She has been getting a little stronger all day,” he said, “and when I left her she was asleep. That is her best chance.”
Hugh nodded, just to show he understood.
“She may live,” said the doctor. “I mean she may get over this attack. I think she will certainly live till she sees you. I think that that desire is stronger than death. Sometimes it happens so.”
“Will—will she know me?” asked Hugh. “Thank you, I forgot, for coming to meet me. It was very kind of you.”
But he held his head high. What wine were those words to him.
“She will certainly know you,” said the other. “She is quite herself. Come in quietly.”
They entered the hushed house by the back door, so that they should not have to pass by her room, and came on to the balcony outside the drawing-room. There was tea laid there; two cups, two plates.
“Your wife ordered it,” said the doctor. “She said to me this morning, ‘Please have tea ready for Hugh when he comes.’ Yes, sit there quietly. I will come back soon.”
Hugh had bowed himself forward, with his face buried in his hands. The freezing of grief and anxiety, its apathy and numbness, passed from him at that little thing, that tiny, intimate touch, and the frost of sorrow was melted. And as the tears rained and the sobs choked him, he kissed the little cakes that were there. It was she—she, who dwelt in these little sugared things.
Then that passed too, and all the reality of their life together strengthened and exalted him. Edith had thought of this, and he poured out tea and drank it, and it was as if she sat by him, as if this was one of those dear, ordinary days, when he had come in and found her, as he had so often found her, waiting to begin. He had often said to her, “Do begin tea if I am late,” but she as often said, “Oh, I like my tea better when you are there.” The triviality of the memory, the triviality of such incidents was brought to the level of to-day; he did naturally what he had done so often. The little things which were associated with her lost their littleness. She, like a golden thread, ran through little and big things alike.