When he was gone, she fell with a shudder, and lay still with her cheek against the crimson cushion.
The professor was sitting at her bedside when she opened her eyes again. Her first recognition was of his figure, sitting, the head bowed upon the hand, as she had seen it when she came first into the house.
"Papa," she said, "you are with me?"
"Yes, my dear," he answered.
"And—there is no one else?"
"No, my dear."
She put out her hand and laid it upon his arm. He thought, with a bitter pang, that she did it as she had often done it in her girlhood, and that, in spite of the change in her, she wore a look which seemed to belong to those days too.
"You will stay with me," she said. "I have come back to you."