But there was no answer—there never could be any answer
Berenice did not faint! She did not even lose consciousness for a moment. Moaning softly to herself, but dry-eyed, she leaned over his shoulder and read the words which he had written to her, of which, indeed, the ink was scarcely dry. When she had finished, she took up the wine-glass in her own fingers, holding it so steadily that not a drop was spilt.
Here was the panacea she craved! The problem of her troubled life was so easily to be solved. Rest with the man she loved!
Her arms would fold around him as she sank to the ground. Perhaps he was already waiting for her somewhere—in one of those mystic worlds where the soul might shake itself free from this weary burden of human passions and sorrows. Her lips parted in a wonderful smile. She raised the glass!
There was a soft patter across the carpet, and a gentle tug at her dress.
“I am very cold,” Freddy cried piteously, holding out a little blue foot from underneath his night-shirt. “If you don’t want to wake Mr. Matravers, will you take me up to bed, please?”
Through a mist of sudden tears, she looked down into her boy’s face. She drew a deep, quick breath—her fingers were suddenly nerveless. There was a great dull stain on the front of her dress, the wine-glass, shattered into many pieces, lay at her feet. She fell on her knees, and with a little burst of passionate sobs took him into her arms.
There were grey hairs in the woman’s head, although she was still quite young. A few yards ahead, the bath chair, wheeled by an attendant, was disappearing in the shroud of white mist, which had suddenly rolled in from the sea. But the woman lingered for a moment with her eyes fixed upon that dim, distant line, where the twilight fell softly upon the grey ocean. It was the single hour in the long day which she claimed always for her own—for it seemed to her in that mysterious stillness, when the shadows were gathering and the winds had dropped, that she could sometimes hear his voice. Perhaps, somewhere, he too longed for that hour—a dweller, it might be, in that wonderful spirit world of the unknown, of which he had spoken sometimes with a curiously grave solemnity. Her hands clasped the iron railing, a light shone for a moment in the pale-lined face turned so wistfully seawards!