"No, dear man, don't hurry," she said. "I know already. Peters has just told me, now, downstairs, that you received the Last Sacraments this morning. That's why I didn't come up sooner. I couldn't see you directly, somehow. I had—well, I had to get my second wind, dearly beloved, so to speak. You see it's such a heavenly day that I couldn't help feeling happier about you. I had persuaded myself those doctors were a pack of croaking old grannies whose collective wisdom had eventuated in a wild mistake, and that, given time and summer weather, you would be better again—you know you have had ups and downs lots of times before—and that then, when the theatre closes and I have my holiday, I'd carry you off, somewhere, anywhere, back to your own fierce, passionate Spain, perhaps, and nurse and coax and care for you till living grew so pretty a business you really wouldn't have the conscience to quit."
Poppy's voice was sweet with caressing tones, sympathetic in quality as her lingering touch.
"Haven't you, perhaps, been a little premature after all?" she said. "Has it really and truly come to that? Mightn't you have put off those last grim ceremonies a trifle longer, and let them wait?"
"They are not grim, dearest friend, but full of strong consolation," Iglesias answered, smiling. He began to see her face more clearly. Her expression was tragic, a world of anguish in it, for all the restraint of her manner and playful glibness of her speech. "Nor, in any case," he added, "can they hasten the event."
"I'm not altogether sure of that," Poppy declared rebelliously.
"I could not quite trust myself as to what the day might bring forth," Iglesias continued. "In point of fact, I have gained strength as it has gone on.—And so it seemed wisest and most fitting to ask for the performance of those sacred rites while I was still of sound mind, and ready in my perception of that in which I was taking part."
"You have suffered?" Poppy said.
"Nothing unendurable. The nights are somewhat wearisome, since I cannot lie down, in ordinary fashion, to rest. But I sit here, or wander through the quiet, kindly house, contentedly enough. And I am well cared for—have no fear as to that. Peters is a faithful creature. She nursed my mother at the last, and her presence is grateful to me, for association's sake."
Iglesias straightened himself up.
"There, there," he said, "do not be too sad. The road is not such a very hard one to tread. The last few months have been the happiest I remember since my childhood. Any anxieties I felt concerning you are set at rest. You are famous, and will be more famous yet, and I know I shall live in your remembrance while you live. It is no slight thing, after all, for a man to have been loved so well by the two women whom he loved. And for the rest, dearest friend, as one draws near to the edge of the great shadow, which we call death, one begins to trust more and fuss less; looking to the next step only, so that one may take it neither with faltering nor with presumptuous haste."