“Yes, I'm awake. I couldn't sleep well to-night, somehow. Too much to think of, I imagine. But where have you been? Why weren't you at meeting? And where—Why, it's almost morning!”
She did not answer at once. The temptation was to say nothing now, to put off the trying scene as long as possible.
“It's morning,” repeated the minister. “Are you sick? Has anything happened?”
“Yes,” she answered slowly, “somethin' has happened. Are you dressed? Could you come down?”
He replied that he would be down in a moment. When he came he found her standing by the table waiting for him. The look of her face in the lamplight shocked him.
“Why, Mrs. Coffin!” he exclaimed. “What IS it? You look as if you had been through some dreadful experience.”
“Maybe I have,” she replied. “Maybe I have. Experiences like that come to us all in this life, to old folks and young, and we have to bear 'em like men and women. That's the test we're put to, Mr. Ellery, and the way we come through the fire proves the stuff we're made of. Sorrows and disappointments and heartbreaks and sicknesses and death—”
She paused on the word. He interrupted her.
“Death?” he repeated. “Death? Is some one dead, some one I know? Mrs. Coffin, what is it you are trying to tell me?”
Her heart went out to him. She held out both her hands.