"To see me before—they say, you know, that—"
"Lily!" he cried.
"Hush! The child! Listen, dear. If I die, take the child. It is your dead child, I think, come to life through me. Yes, yes, it is the little child that has cried for love so long. Redeem your cruelty, oh, Maurice, redeem it to your child. Give it your love. Give it your life. Give it—"
"Lily!" he said again. And there were tears on his cheeks.
"I gave myself to you for this, Maurice. I was waiting for this. Do you understand me now? You scarcely loved me, Maurice. But I loved you. Let me think—in dying—that I have brought you peace at last."
He could not speak. The mystery of woman, the mystery of child was too near to him. Awe came upon him and the terror of his own unworthiness, rewarded—or punished—which was it?—by such compassion, such self-sacrifice.
"When I left you," Lily murmured, and her voice sounded thin and tired, "it seemed as if the spirit of the child came with me, as if I, too, heard its dead voice in the night, crying for its salvation, for its relief from agony. But, Maurice, you cannot hear it now. You will never hear it again—unless—unless—"
She fixed her eyes on him. They were growing dim.
"God has given the dead to you again through me," she faltered, "that you—may—redeem—redeem—your—sin."
She moved, and leaned against him, as if she would gather him and the sleeping child into her embrace. But she could not. She slipped back softly, almost like a snowflake that falls and is gone.