"Perhaps not," Peter answered very low. Cherry returned to her sombre musing.
"We didn't see this end to it, did we?" she said with a pitiful smile after a long while.
"Oh, no--NO!" Peter said, shutting his eyes, and with a faint, negative movement of his head.
"We wouldn't have had this happen--" Cherry began. Her lips trembled, her whole face wrinkled, and she put her hand across her eyes and pressed it there with a gesture of forlornness and sorrow that wrenched Peter's heart. Her tears began to fall fast.
"Poor Cherry--if I could spare you all this!" he said, knotting his fingers and feeling for the first time the prick of bitter tears against his eyelids.
"Oh, there is nothing you can do," she said faintly and wearily after a while. And she whispered, as if to herself, "Nothing--nothing--nothing!"
Then there was silence again. The lamps burned softly; the fire sucked and flickered; a chilling air, full of autumn sadness, began to creep from the corners of the room. Peter's eyes moved over the backs of the old books, Dickens and Thackeray and the "Household Book of Verse," moved to the faded photograph of Cherry's mother on the mantel, a beautiful woman in the big sleeves of the late nineties.
The doctors came back; there was a little stir and rearrangement as they seated themselves.
"Any change?" Cherry asked, cautiously.
"No change." Both men shook their heads.