She obeyed. All flushed with rose light, and gold and amythist splendor, the evening sky glowed like the very gates of paradise.
"It is beautiful," Edith said, but its untold beauty brought to her somehow a sharp pang of pain.
"Beautiful!" he repeated in an ecstatic whisper. "O love! if earth is so beautiful, what must Heaven be!"
Then she heard him softly repeat to himself the words she had read: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain." He drew a long, long breath, like one who is very weary and sees rest near.
"Darling," he said, "how pale you are—white as a spirit. Go out for a little into the air—don't mind leaving me. I feel sleepy again."
She kissed him and went. All her after life she was glad to remember their last parting had been with a caress on her part, a happy smile on his. She descended the steps leading from the window with unquestioning obedience, and passed out into the rose and gold light of the sunset. She remained perhaps fifteen minutes—certainly not more. The red light of the October sky was fast paling to cold gray—the white October moon was rising. She went back. He still lay as she had left him—his eyes were closed—she thought he was asleep. She bent over him, close—closer—growing white almost as himself. And then she knew what it was.
"And there shall be no more death; neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain."
A cry rang through the room, the long, wailing cry of widowhood. She fell on her knees by the bed. An hour after, the passing bell tolled sombrely through the darkness from the steeple of Chesholm Church, telling all whom it might concern that Sir Victor Catheron had gone home.