She made a movement as though she would have come to me.
Then I did shriek aloud, again and again, and covered my face with the sheet, and wound it round my head and body, and held it with all my force.
There was a moment's silence. Then I heard my door close, and then a sound of feet and of voices, and I heard something heavy fall. I disentangled my head from the sheet. My room was empty. Then reason came back to me. I leaped from the bed.
"Ida, my darling, come back! I am not afraid! I love you! Come back! Come back!"
I sprang to my door and flung it open. Some one was bringing a light along the passage. On the floor, outside the door of the death-chamber, was a huddled heap—the corpse, in its grave-clothes. Dead, dead, dead.
She is buried in Mellor churchyard, and there is no stone over her.
Now, whether it was catalepsy—as the doctors said—or whether my love came back even from the dead to me who loved her, I shall never know; but this I know—that, if I had held out my arms to her as she stood at my bed-foot—if I had said, "Yes, even from the grave, my darling—from hell itself, come back, come back to me!"—if I had had room in my coward's heart for anything but the unreasoning terror that killed love in that hour, I should not now be here alone. I shrank from her—I feared her—I would not take her to my heart. And now she will not come to me any more.
Why do I go on living?
You see, there is the child. It is four years old now, and it has never spoken and never smiled.