"No, no; when you are here, they all come alive in my hands. Oh-h-h!" She lifted her tear-wet face, and held up clasped hands like one praying pardon. "You were right; they are a hundred agonies, they cry out while I tear and burn them."
"No, dear, no; the dead are done with crying."
"But these people—" She looked up and down the long room with misty eyes, like one dimly descrying a throng. "They aren't dead, Ethan."
A sharp fear seized him that the strain had been too much.
"Come—come away," he said.
But she clung to the great brass ring in the lion's mouth on the buffet drawer. "They won't really die till we have destroyed all their work—and destroyed ourselves."
"That's true in a sense," he murmured.
"Of course it's true. Does anybody think my grandmother died when the breath went out of her body? She won't really die till the last person dies who remembers her. And the others; here they've been all these years, kept tenderly alive, in letters, in wills and certificates, diaries, poor little pictures!" Her voice wavered and recovered itself fiercely. "Shall I tell you what it's like, destroying these things?" She broke into wild weeping. "All these are like hands clinging on to life. I wrench their fingers away; I force them down. The glimpses I have of them—it's like the last look on drowning faces."
"Val," he said, hoarsely, "there's time yet. Suppose we don't shirk our trust. Suppose we hold the Fort for the Ganos as long as ever we can."
She took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped away her tears, but they flowed and flowed afresh.