'I—I—I—am sure you are speaking truth,' she says, in an almost unintelligible broken whisper; 'but as yet—as yet—I—I—cannot take it in.'
'I would be quick about it if I were you,' answers the other stonily. 'I would not waste any more time. You have wasted five months already; and we are none of us allowed much time to enjoy ourselves in. We none of us keep our good things long. Any one would have thought that I might have kept my Franky a little, would not they? He was only six. Did you know that he was only six? Many people took him for seven; he was so big for his age. What, crying again? Well, I do not much wonder; he was a very loving little fellow, was not he? and had a great fancy for you. He prized that knife almost more than anything he possessed, and yet he was determined that you should have it. You will take care of it, will not you? Good-bye!'
CHAPTER XXXIX
'Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now.'
She is gone—passed out into the blackness of the winter evening—gone before Peggy, paralysed, half-stunned as she is, can arrest her. Was she ever here? The doubt flashes into the girl's mind. Of late, in her long vigils, she has seemed to be parted from the spirit-world by but the consistency of a spider's web. Has that fine partition been broken down? Has she been seeing visions, and dreaming dreams? Did that crape-gowned figure ever stand really in the body beside the table? Did she herself ever look across the lamplight into the still and bottomless despair of its eyes? Did it really give her Franky's knife, and tell her—oh no, it is incredible! God can never have granted to her—to her of all people, sunk so low as she is, far beyond the reach of any joy to touch—to hear such things as her ears seem to have heard. She looks wildly round the room.
'It was not true!' she says out loud; 'it was hallucination. It comes of sleeping so little.'
And yet it must be true, too; for here, clasped in her hand, is the poor knife, the object of the mother's journey. If that be real, then must all the rest be real too. As the splendour of this inference breaks in dazzling overpowering light upon her soul, she sinks on her knees beside the table, lays down her head upon it at the same spot where Talbot had laid his head in his heart-break five months ago, while she had stood over him pronouncing her unjust and inexorable sentence.
'Oh, love, love!' she sighs out; 'dear love! poor love! forgive me! come back to me! how could I tell?'