It is not in times of gaiety that friendships are formed, but in sorrow or suspense. During that long evening this brother and sister suddenly became intimate, more so than months of prosperous intercourse could have made them. At ten o'clock Stephen quietly insisted that Joyce should go to bed while he lay down, all dressed, on the sofa in the dining-room.
“I shall sleep perfectly; it is not the first time I have slept in my clothes,” he said simply.
They went upstairs together and told the nurse of this arrangement. Joyce remained for some moments by the bedside watching her mother's peaceful sleep, and when she turned she found that Stephen had quietly slipped away. Wondering vaguely whether he had intentionally solved her difficulty as to the fraternal good-night, she went to her own room.
The next morning Mrs. Leach was fully conscious, and appeared to be stronger; nevertheless, she knew that the end was near. She called her two children to her bedside, and, turning her blind eyes towards them, spoke in broken sentences.
“I am ready now—I am ready,” she said. “Dears, I am going to your father—and... thank God, I can tell him that I have left you together. I always knew Stephen would come back. I found it written everywhere in the Bible. Stephen—kiss me, dear!”
The man leant over the bed and kissed her.
“Ah!” she sighed, “how I wish I could see you—just once before I die. Joyce!” she added, suddenly turning to her daughter, who stood at the other side of the bed, “tell me what he is like. But—I know .. I KNOW—I feel it. Listen! He is tall and spare, like his father. His hair is black, like—like his father's—it was black before he went away. His eyes, I know, are dark—almost black. He is pale—like a Spaniard!”...
Joyce, looking across the bed with slow horror dawning in her face, looked into a pair of blue eyes beneath tawny hair, cut short as a soldier's hair should be. She looked upon a man big, broad, fair—English from crown to toe—and the quiet command of his lips and eyes made her say—
“Yes, mother, yes.”
For some moments there was silence. Joyce stood pale and breathless, wondering what this might mean. Then the dying woman spoke again.