* * * * *
Then followed a vivacious account of the day and its happenings.
"And now comes the real tug of war. In a few weeks the poor Modernists will be all camping in tents, it seems, by the wayside. Very touching and very exciting. But I am getting too sleepy to think about it. Dear Cathie—I run on—but I love you. Please keep well. Good-bye."
* * * * *
Catharine laid the letter down, still smiling against her will over some of its chatter, and unconsciously made happy by the affection that breathed from its pages no less than from Mary's.
Yet certainly she was very tired. She became sharply conscious of her physical weakness as she sat on by the fire, now thinking of her Mary, and now listening for Alice's step upon the stairs. Alice had grown very dear to Catharine, partly for her own sake, and partly because to be in bitter need and helplessness was to be sure of Catharine's tenderness. Very possibly they two, when Mary married, might make their home together. And Catharine promised herself to bring calm at least and loving help to one who had suffered so much.
The window was half open to the first mild day of March; beside it stood a bowl of growing daffodils, and a pot of freesias that scented the room. Outside a robin was singing, the murmur of the river came up through the black buds of the ash-trees, and in the distance a sheep-dog could be heard barking on the fells. So quiet it was—the spring sunshine—and so sweet. Back into Catharine's mind there flowed the memory of her own love-story in the valley; her hand trembled again in the hand of her lover.
Then with a sudden onset her mortal hour came upon her. She tried to move, to call, and could not. There was no time for any pain of parting. For one remaining moment of consciousness there ran through the brain the images, affections, adorations of her life. Swift, incredibly swift, the vision of an opening glory—a heavenly throng!… Then the tired eyelids fell, the head lay heavily on the cushion behind it, and in the little room the song of the robin and the murmur of the stream flowed on—unheard.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Case of Richard Meynell, by Mrs. Humphrey Ward