"Could I?" she said. "Life holds nothing for me; Death him, or forgetfulness."
Her eyes began to film. He bent over her distractedly, calling her tender names, pleading for a look—a sign.
"Speak to me—forgive me," he cried. "Myron—Myron!"
"I forgive you," she said, looking at him once again with calm and steadfast eye of divine forgetfulness. She sank into a stupor, through which she murmured "My—little My"—tenderly, as to a sleeping child. Then suddenly her eyes opened, a flood of ineffable brightness illumined her face, she stretched forth her arms and uttered a name in a cry of joyous hope, and sank back. The world was over for her. There but remained the involuntary efforts of life against annihilation, efforts which, happily, were few and brief. Twenty minutes after she became a wife, Myron Willis had passed—
"'And surely,' all folk said,
'None ever saw such joy on visage dead.'"
They buried her, as the law required, with the rest of those who died of the pest. Upon her breast they found an ill-made little bag of checked blue and white cotton. Within it was a flossy skein of child's hair tangled by many tears and kisses. They brought it to Dr. Willis, and he replaced it upon the dead breast with whose secret sobs and sighs it had risen and fallen for so long.
The newspapers gave a pathetic account of the "Romance in a Quarantine Station," and told how the famous Dr. Willis, meeting his "girl love" in the hospital, had married her on her deathbed. The tale cast quite a romantic lustre over the doctor's somewhat prosaic career of medical achievement.
There was no word said, however, of their first meeting and parting, nor of a little grave that to this day is unmarked save for a tiny tablet whereon is carven one syllable—MY.