The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that Robinson, with a hand on her arm, was compelled to guide her.
“Good-by, Oh Dear. You’ve been very good to me always. And sometimes, maybe, I have not been good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. Forrest will always be your father and your mother.... And all my jade is yours.”
She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience was over.
Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened to grow more pronounced.
“I am ready, Dick,” she said faintly, still with closed eyes. “I want to make my sleepy, sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold my hand like you did before in the little death.”
She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, for he knew love was in that last look of hers, as he knew it would be when she looked into his eyes at the last.
“Once,” she explained to Graham, “I had to go on the table, and I made Dick go with me into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken dark, the little death in life. It was very easy.”
In the silence she continued her look, then turned her face and eyes back to Dick, who knelt close to her, holding her hand.
With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beckoning of her eyes, she drew his ear down to her lips.
“Red Cloud,” she whispered, “I love you best. And I am proud I belonged to you for such a long, long time.” Still closer she drew him with the pressure of her fingers. “I’m sorry there were no babies, Red Cloud.”