“Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say when.”
“Is there much pain?” Dick queried.
Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for the moment ere she replied, “Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I won’t care to stand it very long. I’ll say when.”
Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey.
“Life is queer, most queer, isn’t it? And do you know, I want to go out with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the ’Gypsy Trail.’—Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think of it! Do, Evan, please.”
Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes.
“Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a womaning Gypsy man should sing it,” she urged. “And stand back there, so, where I can see you.”
And while Graham sang the whole song through to its:
“The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my
tents be fleet,
Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is
all at our feet,”
Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far doorway awaiting commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, stood at her mistress’s head, no longer wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that the finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, at Paula’s dressing table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the anodyne pellets and filled his hypodermic.