AN AFTERWORD
The pen has fallen from Marguerite's hand never again to be taken up. And we who wait for the lifting of the veil find it hard not to question the why and the wherefore.
Hers was a beautiful, blameless life. Her suffering was borne with a great patience and cheerfulness, and we cry and cry again, "Why should this be?"
Jane Renton's philosophy is simple: "God wanted her more than we."
But to me it seems such love as theirs—of husband and wife—should have been allowed to continue yet a little while longer. Jane says it will outlast the ages. To Jane has been given a faith, an understanding which has been withheld from many. Her eyes can see while ours are blinded with tears.
I have her husband's sanction to give her simple story to the world. "It may help to brighten the life of some other sufferer, and she would be glad," I said, and he bowed his head.
The last night of her life was one of silver, as she herself would have described it, for the moon turned the earth with its soft mantle of snow into silver sheen. We drew back the curtains and pushed the bed still nearer to the window. Dimbie's arms pillowed her head. From unconsciousness she kept creeping back to moments of consciousness, and she would speak a little. Once she murmured something about a little black chicken, and always the word "Dimbie" was upon her lips. At the last we left them alone. By and by Dimbie came out of the room and passed out into the moonlit night. She would be glad that it was so, that there was the moonlight, and that while her spirit winged its way to eternal light there was a reflection of its brightness left for her Dimbie.
NANTY.
THE END.
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