The days move slowly through the darkened room. Anne watches his thin hands grow thinner, his sunken eyes grow bigger; yet remains strangely calm, almost contented.
Very near the end there comes an hour when John wakes as from a dream, and remembers all things clearly.
He looks at her half gratefully, half reproachfully.
“Anne, why are you here?” he asks, in a low, laboured voice. “Did they not give you my message?”
For answer she turns her deep eyes upon him.
“Would you have gone away and left me here to die?” she questions him, with a faint smile.
She bends her head down nearer to him, so that her soft hair falls about his face.
“Our lives were one, dear,” she whispers to him. “I could not have lived without you; God knew that. We shall be together always.”
She kisses him, and laying his head upon her breast, softly strokes it as she might a child’s; and he puts his weak arms around her.
Later on she feels them growing cold about her, and lays him gently back upon the bed, looks for the last time into his eyes, then draws the lids down over them.