She was not gone a minute; she came out of the room on tiptoe, closing the door softly behind her. She was trembling so that at first she could not speak and had to lean against the wall for support.
"Oh what is it? What is it?" cried Gwen in a panic, turning white.
It was some moments before Polly could speak, then the words came in gasps.
"She's gone with him," she panted.
"What?"
"She's gone right—away—with him—to Heaven." She could scarcely speak.
"Do you mean she is dead?" cried Gwen.
"Yes; yes, she's dead; and the moon is shining on 'em both."
Gwen appalled at the news, opened the door and looked in. But what she saw was so wonderful and beautiful that all horror subsided. Rachel was kneeling by the bed on which Luke lay, her cheek resting on his dead hand and a smile of rapture on her face. The moonlight was streaming into the room from the open window on to the faces of husband and wife. Once more they were together in its pathway as they had been on that evening on the sea at Southwold, but now they were unconscious of it, as they were together in the city that has no need of the sun neither the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the Light thereof.
When the villagers heard that Rachel had died of heart failure on the same day as her husband they mourned and wept. So young, they said, to die! Two valuable lives given for the sake of a poor sick baby of a drunken woman! What a waste of life!