“Here,” she gasped, “give it to me! give it to me!”
She clutched the envelope in her unsteady hands, and suddenly her jaw dropped.
Fitz ran to the door. On the stairs were the two doctors, followed closely by Eve. In a moment the doctors were at the bedside.
“Yes,” said one of them--the younger of the two--and he glanced at his watch. “I gave her an hour.”
The elder man took the dead woman’s hand in his. He released the envelope from her grasp and read the superscription, “Recipe for apple jelly.” With a grave smile he handed the envelope to Eve as Fitz took her out of the room.
They went downstairs together, and both were thinking of D’Erraha. They went into the library, which was silent and gloomy. Fitz had not spoken yet, but she seemed to understand his silence, just as she had understood it once before. She had told him then. She did not do so now.
Eve was not thinking of the dead woman upstairs. This death came to her only as a faint reflection of the one great grief which had cut her life in two--as great griefs do. She was perhaps wondering how it was that Fitz seemed always to come to her at those moments when she could not do without him. She was more probably not thinking at all, but resting as it were in the sense of complete safety and protection which this man’s presence gave her.
There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of street traffic faintly heard through the plate-glass windows. Fitz was looking at her, his blue eyes grave and searching. This was not a man to miss his opportunity, this youngest commander on the list.
“Eve,” he said, “I used to think at D’Erraha that you cared for me.”
“I have always cared for you,” she answered, with a queer little smile, half bold, half shy.