Another autumn had come round. Ellin Delorane, feeble now, sat in the church-porch, the graveyard lying around her under the hot September sun, soon herself to be laid there. Chancing to take that way round from buying some figs at Salmon’s for Hugh and Lena, I saw her, and dashed up the churchyard path.
“You seem to have set up a love for this lively spot, Ellin! You were sitting here the last time I passed by.”
“The sun is hot yet, and I get tired, so I come across here for a rest when out this way,” she answered, a sweet smile on her wan face and a hectic on her thin cheeks. “Won’t you stay with me for a little while, Johnny?”
“Are you better, Ellin?” I asked, taking my place on the opposite bench, which brought my knees near to hers, for the porch was not much more than big enough for a coffin to pass through.
She gently shook her head as she glanced across at me, a steadfast look in her sad brown eyes. “Don’t you see how it is, Johnny? That I shall never be better in this world?”
“Your weakness may take a turn, Ellin; it may indeed. And—he may come back yet.”
“He will never come back: rely upon that,” she quietly said. “He is waiting for me on the Eternal shores.”
Her gaze went out afar, over the gravestones and the green meadows beyond, almost (one might fancy) into the blue skies, as if she could see those shores in the distant horizon.
“Is it well to lose hope, Eileen mavourneen?”