“I’m afraid.”
At first he thought she meant she was afraid of the tongues of the many, but that fear could be no more than superficial. Hers was deep. It seemed to shake her as an angry wind a tree.
“Well, well,” he said.
She reached out in the darkness for his hand. In silence she pressed his hand, and then:
“You never know,” she said.
It was all she could tell him, that she was suffering. He said:
“There is nothing to fear,” and in silence he pressed her hand.
“You have been good to me.”
There was a knell in the words. They were the epitaph of their life together.