"You see," she said, and sitting down, on a straight-backed chair, looked at me with lustreless eyes.
Death had been hovering about her windows before, but had entered at last; not to take the sickly young woman longing to die, but the hale man, who would have clung to the last edge of life.
"He is taken, and I am left," she said abruptly, after a long pause.
Her drawl had vanished: pain and grief had made her simple. "Then," I thought with myself, "she did love him!" But I could say nothing. She took my silence for the sympathy it was, and smiled a heart-rending smile, so different from that little sad smile she used to have; really pathetic now, and with hardly a glimmer in it of the old self-pity. I rose, put my arms about her, and kissed her on the forehead; she laid her head on my shoulder, and wept.
"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," I faltered out, for her sorrow filled me with a respect that was new.
"Yes," she returned, as gently as hopelessly; "and whom he does not love as well."
"You have no ground for saying so," I answered. "The apostle does not."
"My lamp is gone out," she said; "gone out in darkness, utter darkness. You warned me, and I did not heed the warning. I thought I knew better, but I was full of self-conceit. And now I am wandering where there is no way and no light. My iniquities have found me out."
I did not say what I thought I saw plain enough,—that her lamp was just beginning to burn. Neither did I try to persuade her that her iniquities were small.
"But the Bridegroom," I said, "is not yet come. There is time to go and get some oil."