“You know then, Harriet; they have told you?”
She was human; the sound that broke from her was the cry of a rent soul.
The doctor, who had gone back to the mantel, crouched over the fire. The Sister seemed to shrink into the shadows beyond the narrow bed. Alexina clenched her hands, her head on her arms outstretched on the table.
But Harriet had regained herself. “I am here to ask you something. May I be married to you—now—at once, I mean?”
His response was not audible, only her reply. “Oh, surely you will. For the rest of my life—to have been—you will give me this, won’t you?”
There was a quick movement from him, and a sound of warning from the nurse who moved forward out of the shadow.
Material things seemed to come back to Harriet. Alarm sprang into her voice. “Shall I go away?” she asked the nurse, even timidly.
The answer came from him. “No; oh, no. Since it may be for so little time I may ask it of you; stay with me, Harriet.”
She turned to the doctor.
“Stay,” he told her, poor boy, new to these things.