The close room, with its smell of medicines and eau-de-Cologne and its strange breathless hush, frightened her just as it had done once before. She saw again the religious picture, the bleeding Christ and the crucifix, the high white bed, the dim windows and the little table with the bottles and the glasses. It was all as it had been before. Her terror grew. She felt as though no power could drag her to that bed. Something lurked there, something horrible and unclean, that would spring upon her and hold her down with its claws ...
"Maggie!" said the clear faint voice that she knew so well. Her terror left her. She did not notice Aunt Elizabeth, who was seated close to the bed, nor Mr. Magnus, nor the nurse, nor the doctor. She went forward unafraid.
"Doctor, would you mind ..." the voice went on. "Three minutes alone with my niece ..." The doctor, a stout red-faced man, said something, the figures, all shadowy in the dim light, withdrew.
Maggie was aware of nothing except that there was something of the utmost urgency that she must say. She came close to the bed, found a chair there, sat down and bent forward. There her aunt was lying, the black hair in a dark shadow across the pillow, the face white and sharp, and the eyes burning with a fierce far-seeing light.
They had the intense gaze of a blind man to whom sight has suddenly been given: he cries "I see! I see!" stretching out his arms towards the sun, the trees, the rich green fields. She turned her head and put both her hands about Maggie's; she smiled.
Maggie said, "Oh, Aunt Anne, do you feel bad?"
"No dear. I'm in no pain at all. Now that you've come I'm quite happy. It was my one anxiety." Her voice was very faint, so that Maggie had to lean forward to catch the words.
"You'll have thought me unkind all this time," said Maggie, "not to have come, but it hasn't been unkindness. Many times I've wanted, but there seemed to be so much to do that it wasn't RIGHT to come away."
"Are you happy, dear?" Aunt Anne said in her ghostly whisper.
"Very, very happy," said Maggie, remembering what Mr. Magnus had said to her.