VI
He broke it presently by saying: “There’s absolutely no doubt of her death?”
“Unfortunately none. I’ve just risen from my knees by the bed where they’ve laid her out.”
He fixed his eyes hard on the floor; then he raised them to mine. “How does she look?”
“She looks—at peace.”
He turned away again, while I watched him; but after a moment he began: “At what hour, then——?”
“It must have been near midnight. She dropped as she reached her house—from an affection of the heart which she knew herself and her physician knew her to have, but of which, patiently, bravely she had never spoken to me.”
He listened intently and for a minute he was unable to speak. At last he broke out with an accent of which the almost boyish confidence, the really sublime simplicity rings in my ears as I write: “Wasn’t she wonderful!” Even at the time I was able to do it justice enough to remark in reply that I had always told him so; but the next minute, as if after speaking he had caught a glimpse of what he might have made me feel, he went on quickly: “You see that if she didn’t get home till midnight—”
I instantly took him up. “There was plenty of time for you to have seen her? How so,” I inquired, “when you didn’t leave my house till late? I don’t remember the very moment—I was preoccupied. But you know that though you said you had lots to do you sat for some time after dinner. She, on her side, was all the evening at the ‘Gentlewomen.’ I’ve just come from there—I’ve ascertained. She had tea there; she remained a long, long time.”