“I don’t care, Jennie—I don’t care! I couldn’t go on if you⸺”
“Yes, you could, Billy. You could. You would have the air again. It would comfort you after a time. You think not now, but it would, dear. And—and—Billy, do you believe in the—the Afterward?”
“I don’t know. I only know⸺”
“I think,” said Jennie slowly, “there must be an Afterward. I almost know it now. I used to doubt and wonder. But now I am sure. Because, Billy, the air won’t need you always. There will be others, sooner or later, to take your place. But I shall need you, always—and there can be no others, ever. You will come to me—Afterward. It is only fair. It would be so-so cruelly futile and incomplete, otherwise. I have a certainty—something I can’t explain—but a certainty, that when the air is done with you we shall find each other—somewhere—somehow! If I weren’t sure of that I couldn’t, I know I couldn’t, go away, even for a little while. And if I do have to go, dear, you will remember—remember what I tell you now. It will only be for a little while. Try to believe. Try—try! And go back to the air, Billy. I shall be waiting—waiting for you—until—the last crash—Billy, dear!”
She stopped speaking. Billy saw that her eyes were closed and that she was panting with the effort of what she had said. She looked unutterably weary and yet, somehow, indescribably happy.
In a little while her eyes opened and her lips moved feebly again, more feebly than before.
“Isn’t—isn’t John hopping off this afternoon, Billy?” she asked.
“About four o’clock,” said Billy.
“Daddy said something about it. You are helping him, aren’t you?”
“I’m supposed to be.”