"Yes, we never think we can lose those we love. You must be tired. You have not eaten nor slept. Will you have something? Later we can speak of her."
"I want to see her."
"She is there. Come."
She led him into the death chamber, knelt for a moment at the foot of the bed, motioning to the nun who was watching the body to follow her. She had divined Albert's desire. When he was sure of being alone, his sorrow carried him beyond all bounds, as a river its dam. She who lay there, emaciated and white, her eyes closed, her hands crossed over a crucifix—and what withered hands!—she whose forehead and cheeks, like marble, cold, but not hard, froze his mouth, as he kissed them in vain, she who would never again hear him, never see him or speak to him, she had twice given him life. After giving him birth, she nourished, developed and strengthened him without help or fortune. He owed to her his intellectual power, the moral force of his judgment, the courage to undertake those lengthy works, which demand a continued effort, of which so few are capable. In what intimacy they had spent so many years, the busiest and the happiest of years! He remembered them now with a sorrow that only one word could express, which re-echoed in the silence, like a groan.
"Mother!"
From afar he always felt her protection. She was a witness in his behalf. Now that witness was no more, and parts of his life lost their meaning, their value. With her he would bury his childhood and his youth, a whole period of days, clear as the expression of her eyes in life; a whole period of bright days that he had never found since and could never find again. And it was not he who had closed her eyes.
Was it not better that it was not he? Between them there was a fixed gulf. For a long time she had ceased to reproach him, but the direction of her thoughts was contrary to his, and their conversations, formerly so intimate, so deep, which were to him an inspiration, had for the most part, lost their power to interest and uplift him. Many forgotten details now came back to his memory, expressions of sadness, of words, indirectly imploring. Yes, he had burdened her last months with a sorrow, the weight of which she bore without complaint, but which had finally crushed her. He could not mourn her without a secret remorse. Formerly, when he was still quite a young man, giving way to a naturally quick temper, which he had great difficulty in controlling, he had spoken rudely to her. What shame he had felt! But she, anxious not to wound his pride, came to him as soon as he was quiet, so that he might be spared the first step. Then he learned to despise his faults. And now they were separated forever without a true reconciliation.
He had reached the limit of his despair and was utterly crushed, when Elizabeth came in quietly to join him. She made him sit down, and too weary to resist, he meekly obeyed. Their thoughts so long separated, were at one in the same sorrow. It was one of those unfathomable griefs, in which the only comfort is to weep with another, and they could not mingle their tears. Stricken by the same blow, the embrace which would have brought them comfort, which so many friends can exchange, was forbidden to them. Thus Albert had a keener realization of his solitude.
"Nobody," he said to himself to arouse himself from his suffering, "can know what I have lost. I alone shall carry away the memory and knowledge of the will power which sustained her little body, so fragile beneath the sheet, the fire which animated those closed eyes. Anne could not come with me. She pities me from a distance, but she did not know her. She only knew of her unfriendliness toward her, and her rigid uprightness. Our love is disarmed before this dear, dead woman who belongs solely to me. And she who is here is nothing more to me than a stranger."
"The Stranger," shielded by the beloved presence of the dead, commenced to tell him in a low voice of the beginning of the illness and its successive phases. She told of the invalid's composure, her spirit of calm, her preparation, her desire to see her son again, the good-by she had sent him. She omitted everything that had reference to their separation and to her own devotion. She spoke with so much tact and filial love, that, as he listened, Albert was getting comfort in grief, which can come to us only by deepening our suffering. Overcome by his injustice, he murmured: