W. Keyse and Janey went off to bed, and the other servants, instructed through the Doctor's consulting-room speaking-pipe, shut up the house and retired, all save the night-maid who answered the telephone, and attended to the midnight rings at the hall-door. But Mrs. Keyse did not follow the household. The Doctor and Mrs. Saxham were still shut up together in the consulting-room. Mrs. Keyse owned to herself that she had talked all that rubbage about That There Green and cetra, to hide that her heart was as water in her bosom, and that she trimbled and shook all over after the fashion of them Fancy shapes of Chicken in Haspeck, or Coffin cream, or Blue Mange coloured with Scotch Anneal.
It grew late and later. The flares on the Flying Ground, many times renewed, had died down to greasy black ash in the scorched and dented buckets, before there was a movement or a sound in the dark consulting-room. Then the woman who sat in the chair sighed, and the long quivering breath she drew, stirred the thick hair of the man who knelt upon the floor before her, holding her in his arms.
"Owen!"
"My wife!"
The sigh that had escaped her seemed to flutter through the unlighted room like some dusky-winged creature of the darkness. She leaned her face upon his brow, pressing her lips upon the smooth place above the broad meeting eyebrows. The first kiss she had ever given Saxham had been placed just there. Now the sweet lips were cold. He could feel how the delicate white teeth were set behind them. Had she relaxed her grip upon herself he knew she must have cried aloud. Nor could he help her save by his sustaining hold, and the silence of a grief only equalled by her own. Thus they had remained, speechless through the hours; drawn closer than ever by the anguish of mutual loss.
Now she stirred in Saxham's arms, and spoke collectedly:
"Tell me Bawne is not—dead! Give me courage to go on waiting. And yet, do not help me to deceive myself or you, with a false hope."
"If the worst had happened," said Saxham, almost appealingly, "should we not have known it?"
She breathed between stiff lips, trying to control her shuddering:
"Twice to-night I have heard him call me: 'Mother!' and then again, 'Mother!' Now I feel"—she closed her eyes and opened them widely, staring through the darkness—"that he is wanting me!—wanting you!—as he never has before. We were always near till now—he could not realise what parting meant!"