She did not speak. She did not even shake her head. She only looked at the girl, and the girl understood.
She threw herself into her sister's arms.
“He is dead!” she cried. “But, thank God, he did not die without knowing that one woman in the world loved him truly for his own sake.”
“That surely is the best thought that a man can have, going into the Presence,” said Mrs. Abington. “Ah, my child, I am a wicked woman, but I know that while you live your fondest reflection will be that the thought of your love soothed the last hours of the truest man that ever lived. Ah, there was none like him—a man of such sweet simplicity that every word he spoke came from his heart. Let others talk about his works; you and I love the man, for we know that he was greater and not less than those works. And now he is in the presence of God, telling the Son who on earth was born of a woman that he had all a woman's love.”
Mary put her arm about the neck of the actress, and kissed her.
She went with her sister among the weeping men and women—he had been a friend to all—up the stairs and into the darkened room.
She threw herself on her knees beside the bed.