I was in bed. No one was with me. The doctor had just been here and—as he considered his duty—explained for me, what my dear Henry had been so carefully keeping from me, that it was a matter of life and death. He had very little hope. But I was not afraid. I lay there and thought of you, of Henry and the children, and then again of you. I thought of how I had told you that I had to undergo that severe operation. I was bound to tell you—then, in case I died, I had to say good-bye to you.
You tried to turn it off with a joke, but in a few minutes you grew grave. You asked if I was nervous, and I begged you, if matters did not go well, to visit my grave, just once. Only once. It was very childish of me, but you did not laugh. You merely said, “To satisfy you I will promise, but I know you will live to visit my grave....”
I have the power when I like, of bringing you before me in the flesh, so very much in the flesh, that I at times can hardly bear other people to be in the room. I want to be alone with you. After I came out of the operating theatre, I was alone with you every evening and every night.
I talked to you, I talked ... and you were silent. I never was able to put many words into your mouth. But your attentive eyes rested on me ... and you were there.
When the doctor had gone, I lay by myself for a long time. The nurse supposed naturally that I needed rest after my conversation with the doctor. I thought of you. I was so curiously restless, a sort of joyous, expectant restlessness. I kept looking at the door, as if every minute I should see you coming in.
I didn’t really expect you. I knew, of course, that it was impossible, for many reasons. It would not occur to you to call on me. You might easily imagine that visits so shortly before the operation would not be permitted. There had been flowers in my room, sent by my friends, and many of Henry’s patients.
But they had been taken away, because I must not be excited by their scent. I lay there and gazed at the door; my heart began to beat violently—no, not exactly to beat, but it felt as if something was entering it. You must not think, beloved, that I imagined all this afterwards. I felt—I could feel distinctly that some great joy was on its way to me. I heard the footsteps approaching in my heart, and then I heard them outside on the stairs. Nurses and visitors were coming and going all day on the stairs, but, nevertheless, I sat up in bed pressing my hand on my heart, for I knew, I knew, that this concerned you.
My nurse came in with a parcel. It seemed as if she, too, understood that this was something which I ought to see at once. She came quite close up to me with the box and, smiling, opened it deliberately, so deliberately that it looked as if she were teasing me.... “Let me open it,” I begged, but no, she insisted on doing it herself.
I felt how the blood deserted my face.... “Give them to me!” I implored as if I were praying for my life. She handed me the long spray from which the flowers hung like gold sunbeams, and fluttered over the whiteness of the sheet. I held the spray in my hand.
When she was gone, I kissed every one of the sensitive flowers. And you were with me. All your steadfast calm was infused into my blood. Now I could die happy. The flowers were put in water and placed in the window. They were to stay there all night, I said, and no one objected. I had a light burning the whole night through, as if I were afraid of the dark. I dozed and woke, and dozed and woke. The flowers did not sleep, and they did not fly away.