“Are you in pain, Sarah?”
“Hah!”
A long sigh, as if the cool, soft hand had acted like a professors rod in an electrical experiment, and the pain had been discharged.
“No, no—no pain.”
The woman’s eyes were closed, now that she had taken hold of the hand that had seemed to give her rest, and clung to it, keeping it by her cheek as she half-turned over in her bed; while Claude sent word that she was going to stay there and watch. And there, in spite of Mary Dillon’s prayers to let her stay, she did watch, and listen to Sarah Woodham’s muttered words.
“At rest now,” she cried twice. “Now he will sleep; or will he meet him face to face?”
Toward morning she slept calmly, and when, at daybreak, Mary stole into the room, exhaustion had done its work, and Claude was sleeping too.