"If you haven't done your best, it's too late when you're dying to try to mend things. If you have done your best, there's no more to be said."
And no more was said for several hours. She lay quite peacefully, took the half-hourly restoratives from Val, but was visibly weaker on each occasion. Ethan went out and sent for the doctor. He came back in time to lift the half-unconscious form up in his arms, while Val held a glass to the pale lips.
"Enough," she whispered; "lay me down." And it was done. She opened her eyes and faintly pressed Val's hand. "Good girl," she said.
A slight spasm passed over her face. She turned her head away, clutched the sheet, and, with what seemed a superhuman effort, drew it over her face. Ethan put out his hand to take it away, but Val arrested him.
"Don't! don't! She would never let any one see when she suffered." The girl fell sobbing at the bedside.
Some time after, Val drew the linen down. The suffering was over, so was the long life.
Venus and the "new" servant had taken turns to sit through the day in the long room, where the body lay. Ethan was to watch through the night, but Val had insisted that she should be there from ten till midnight while Ethan slept, before his watch began. He opposed her plan, but gave way at last and went to lie down—not to sleep. Just before twelve o'clock he came out of his room, down over the head of his old enemy Yaffti, and stopped outside the long room door. Again a remembrance of his childhood's awe, and the queer sense that he ought, in spite of all, to knock to-night before going in. He turned the knob and entered softly.
The long, straight outlines of the coffin set high upon a bier, the candles burning at the head, and in the shadow at the coffin's side a deeper shadow on the floor. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, he saw it was his cousin crouching there on her knees, with bowed head and hands folded straight before her, palm to palm. He went forward and tried to lift her.
"No, let me alone; I—I want to pray."
"To pray, Val?"