"Shall we go in, Marie-Louise?"
"No, no." She cowered against his arm.
Over her head Richard said to Pip, "I shall come as soon as I can."
So Pip went down, and the two were left alone in the tumult and blackness of the night.
As Marie-Louise lay for a moment quiet against his arm, Richard bent down to her. "Are you still afraid?"
"Yes, oh, yes. I keep thinking—if I should die. And I am afraid to die."
"You are not going to die. And if you were there would be nothing to fear. Death is just—falling asleep. Rarely any terror. We doctors know, who see people die. I know it, and your father knows it."
By the light of a blinding flash he saw her white face with its wet red hair.
"Dad doesn't know it as you know," she said, chokingly. "He couldn't say it as you—say it."
"Why not?"