It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.
Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.
Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in gold.
His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.
As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.
CHAPTER XXVI
The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better." The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep. Meanwhile she was terribly awake.
She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond. There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.
The next day she sent for him.