I saw the mirrored eyes grow dark, the tremulous mouth straighten into lines of control before I left my curiously impersonal scrutiny of myself and opened the door for my husband.
"Well?"
"Your father is awake," said Bill, very tall and broad-shouldered on the threshold. "I have been trying to persuade him to have a nurse, but he won't listen to me."
"Sarah is better than any hospital graduate," I answered, "and I am quite strong enough to be with him now."
"As you wish," he answered gently. "But I think you over-estimate your strength, my dear."
I walked past him into the hall.
"Sarah has prepared the guest room for you," I said. "It is next door to father."
"Thank you."
He walked with me to the door of the sick-room, stood aside and let me enter alone. Father was still conscious, he knew me, tried to raise his hand. I put mine over it and sat for the rest of the afternoon by his bed. Sometimes he seemed to sleep, and I watched him with a passion of sorrow and love unlike anything I had ever known. All his defences were down, all his barriers of reserve. He was like a child, and, I thought, quietly happy and at peace. It is difficult to set down on paper how I yearned over him as the slow hours dragged by. But when Sarah came to relieve me and I rose, stiff and cramped from long sitting, I was conscious that, somehow, I had come to grips with myself, had seen for the first time what I owed to my father, had realized fully his sacrifice and his unfailing thought of me. It was as if we had talked together, we two, a long intimate hour. And I knew then, as never before, that I owed him not duty nor obedience, for those are unloving words, but tenderness and endless gratitude. If before he left me forever, my marriage was the one thing to bring him peace, then no matter how mistaken his love for me had been in that instance, I had been more than right to do for him as he wished. The fact that in so doing I had probably ruined two lives, was of minor consideration.
Two days went by. On the evening of the second, the doctors held out very little hope that my father would live through the night. I watched with them until morning. I had no tears left. I had come to a place where no tears were, a place too deep to be stirred by emotion or even grief.