He nodded emphatically two or three times.
"That, I believe, is the way you judge women. That is why their actions are so incomprehensible to you. You form an opinion of them and then, naturally, everything they do seems a mystery, because you won't change your opinion. They're not the mystery. I assure you women are very simple. The mystery is that their actions don't conform with your pre-conceived opinion." She stumbled over those last big words. She was not quite sure of them. They sounded very large, moreover, they sounded as if they expressed what she felt. What they really meant was another matter. She could have told you nothing about that. That is not the way women choose their words.
"Well now," he said--"we must be going. Of course I haven't been, though I arrived last night. I counted on your coming."
"Yes," she whispered, "that's the wonderful part about you--you believe."
She thought of her father--she thought of the man with the brown beard like St. Joseph. They believed nothing until it was before their eyes. But a woman likes to be trusted, because at least, she means to do what she says; sometimes--God knows--she does it.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE PASSING
It was a greater ordeal than they knew of, for Death, though he is for ever in our midst, always covers his face, and you may never recognise the features until that last moment when, with the sweeping gesture of the arm, he throws aside the folds that enshroud him, and in his quiet voice, so low, yet so distinct, announces "It is finished."
At the opening of the little door, they beheld the dear old white-haired lady. Her arms fell about them both and, in her feeble way, she clasped them to her. It was not hysterical, not that cry of the witless woman who is faced with the stern matters of life and will lean upon any shoulder to support her weight. She was losing that which was hers alone, and these two, though she thought they belonged irrevocably to each other, belonged also in their way to her. They were all now that was left her.
"How is he?" asked John, as she led them down that vast chamber to the deep-set door which opened to the tiny bedroom.