“Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?”
“Yes”—very softly, and her head drooped again.
“I am come to prepare you for death.”
A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that low voice:
“When will it be?”
The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the distance.
“Now. The time is at hand.”
That slight shiver passed again.
“It is so soon—ah, it is so soon!”
There was a long silence. The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at last: