"I must wake him soon," said Noémi, gently.
Michael dozed a little, only a few minutes, and woke with a start. He did not know he had been asleep. "Noémi," he cried, "Dodi was singing; I heard him: how sweetly he sings!"
Noémi pressed both her hands to her heart, and drove back the outward expression of her agony with superhuman courage. Yes, he is already singing in heaven, amidst the angelic choir—among the innumerable seraphim! that was the song he joined in.
Toward evening Michael sent Noémi out. "Go and put Dodi to bed, and give him a kiss for me."
She did so. "What did Dodi say?" he asked her. Noémi could not speak; she bent over Michael and pressed a kiss on his lips.
"That was his message, the treasure!" cried Michael, and the kiss sent him to sleep. The child sent it to him from his own slumber.
The next morning he asked again about the boy. "Take Dodi out into the air; it is bad for him to be in the house; carry him into the garden."
They were about to do so. Therese had dug a grave during the night at the foot of a weeping-willow.
"You go too; and stay out there with him. I shall doze, I think, I feel so much better," Michael told Noémi.
Noémi left the sick-room and turned the key: then they carried God's recovered angel out, and committed him to the care of the universal mother—earth. Noémi would not have a mound raised over him; Michael would be so sad when he saw it, and it would retard his recovery. They made a flower-bed there, and planted in its midst a rose-tree—one of those Timar had grafted—with white flowers, whose purity was unstained. Then she went back to the sick man.