“Is the party over?... Have they all gone?” he asked.
“Yes, Jack.... It’s almost daylight. You’d better try to sleep again.”
He lay down without answering her, and as she bent to kiss him good-night, she heard him say softly, “I wish I could have gone to the party.”
“You will, Jack, some day—before very long. You’re growing stronger every day.”
Again a silence, while Olivia thought bitterly, “He knows that I’m lying. He knows that what I’ve said is not the truth.”
Aloud she said, “You’ll go to sleep now—like a good boy.”
“I wish you’d tell me about the party.”
Olivia sighed. “Then I must close Nannie’s door, so we won’t waken her.” And she closed the door leading to the room where the old nurse slept, and seating herself on the foot of her son’s bed, she began a recital of who had been at the ball, and what had happened there, bit by bit, carefully and with all the skill she was able to summon. She wanted to give him, who had so little chance of living, all the sense of life she was able to evoke.
She talked on and on, until presently she noticed that the boy had fallen asleep and that the sky beyond the marshes had begun to turn gray and rose and yellow with the rising day.