There was silence between us for a long while after that; she went back to the sofa, and I took her hand and bowed my face over it, and so we sat.
The leaves rustled out of doors. Faith, up stairs, was singing herself to sleep with a droning sound.
“He talked of risking an operation,” she said, at length, “but decided to-day that it was quite useless. I suppose I must give up and be sick now; I am feeling the reaction from having kept up so long. He thinks I shall not suffer a very great deal. He thinks he can relieve me, and that it may be soon over.”
“There is no chance?”
“No chance.”
I took both of her hands, and cried out, I believe, as I did that first night when she spoke to me of Roy,—“Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” and tried to think what I was doing, but only cried out the more.
“Why, Mary!” she said,—“why, Mary!” and again, as before, she passed her soft hand to and fro across my hair, till by and by I began to think, as I had thought before, that I could bear anything which God who loved us all—who surely loved us all—should send.
So then, after I had grown still, she began to tell me about it in her quiet voice, and the leaves rustled, and Faith had sung herself to sleep, and I listened wondering. For there was no pain in the quiet voice,—no pain, nor tone of fear. Indeed, it seemed to me that I detected, through its subdued sadness, a secret, suppressed buoyancy of satisfaction, with which something struggled.
“And you?” I asked, turning quickly upon her.
“I should thank God with all my heart, Mary, if it were not for Faith and you. But it is for Faith and you. That’s all.”