“Please, Frank!”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do, dear.”
“If you’d wrap me in a blanket and carry me in. Just for a second—just to see it—once.”
“Mrs. Moore,” the nurse put it, “it doesn’t seem much and I’d like to say ‘yes.’ But it would weaken you too much.”
“No—no! It wouldn’t—it couldn’t! Why—it’s the thing I’ve been waiting for! It would give me new life. [234] ]I want to see his name all lighted up. Please—please! Don’t deny me just this little thing.”
Frank Moore’s gaze went desperately to the nurse’s. She stood locking and unlocking her hands, nervous uncertainty battling with professional caution.
“We’ll wait until Dr. Griffith gets here. If he permits it—”
With gaze fastened on her, Frank Moore knew that she was certain the doctor would not permit it. Yet when he came at five and the dark eyes went quickly to his with their anxious plea, he stood looking down at them for a moment, prolonged by silence—then bowed his head in quiet assent.
The man who had been watching did not stop to question or consider why. He saw only the light that like white fire came again to the eyes he loved. Gathering her close, with head bent to hers, he carried her to the window that faced the park.
Dusk with its faint blue haze of beauty had settled and through it glimmered the first sparkle of the evening star. A building off toward Broadway, mysteriously illuminated from below, glowed moonwhite and dreamlike. The city itself, at this weird hour between day and night, seemed scarcely real. But it was not on the unreality of material things that the dark eyes centered. Over the park they wandered and above the long black trellis of the elevated.