The words dropped one by one from her pallid lips, slowly, faintly, yet with indescribable emphasis.
"You must—wait," she whispered. "Promise me that you will wait. Quick!"
He obeyed, awestruck, for she had closed her eyes, and he feared she was gone. After a pause she spoke of his sermon: "It is here—under—my—pillow. Will you read the last two pages to me?"
He consented reluctantly, obedient to some spiritual authority. At the sound of his broken, troubled voice, harsh, but vibrant with that strange arresting quality which always had thrilled her, she smiled and sighed. Mark read the manuscript, unable to recognise it as his own. But reading on, he leaped the years which had passed. The sermon closed with a passage of great beauty and power. When he finished, he said wonderingly: "Did I write that?"
Betty whispered: "You know now why I couldn't come."
Mark remembered his own aphorism: that the best work of men is greater than themselves. And, if so, the conclusion followed inevitably: this sermon, infinitely greater than himself, must have been inspired not from within, but from without—by the Infinite!
"It is getting very dark," said Betty.
"Yes," he replied.
The sun had not reached its zenith, but it was dark indeed for the speaker. Betty's breath came and went with difficulty, as the heart and lungs slowly failed. Mark raised her head. Her fingers felt for his hand. He perceived that she was making a sign on the back of it. At first he thought it was a caress, but the fingers traced the same sign again and again—a cross.
He wished to speak of love, but the dreadful lump filled his throat—strangling him. She was dying, slipping from his grasp. If he could have believed that a meeting was possible elsewhere, still the doleful certainty possessed him that the flesh-and-blood woman was departing for ever. Revolt raged within him, while her finger traced the symbol of the faith he had abjured, the symbol of the love which vanquishes hate and death.