she knew or remembered husband or child or friend.
The Doctor left her then, but at the close of the day he was summoned hastily, to see now without mistake that the battle of her life was almost ended.
“Stay with her, Doctor,” Reuben pleaded. “It’s a sore struggle. Try something more.”
“I can’t stay, man,” he answered. “There is no more to do. I’d give my right hand to save her; but I can’t see her suffer and be unable to help her. She’s the only white soul here, and now she is going.”
He turned to the bedside, and stood silently looking at the face with the dread shadow on it. Suddenly opening her eyes, her gaze fell first on him, and, startled out of her usual composure, she gave an irrepressible shudder. He understood what it meant. She had treated him always with perfect courtesy and confidence as her physician and true friend; he knew—for there had not been wanting those to tell him of it—that she had silenced with dignified rebuke the evil tales that more than one had tried to tell her of him, not because they disliked him, but because they loved to talk. But he knew also, what they did not, that in her pure heart she shrank from him, that his very presence was loathsome to her; and there had been times when, in her bodily weakness, she had been unable to control her aversion to his slightest touch. He had borne it quietly, humbling as it was, but it was doubly bitter to bear at the very last.
“I will bid you good-night, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said, trying hard to steady his voice. “You will not want me any more this evening, I think.”
“Good-by, Doctor,” she said, and he saw that she knew all.
“You will not want me,” he repeated mechanically.
“I want you—there,” she answered with a great effort. “Promise me that you will be there.”
He did not speak.