A radiant, soul-full look dwelt in her tear-dimmed eyes. That this man—a comparative stranger—should manifest this interest in her brother aroused all the gratitude and affection of her warm nature.
"And I love you, Dr. Graham, for loving him," she said, in the pathos of the language that never speaks untruthfully,—the pathos of irrepressible feeling. Then she added: "Do not leave us, doctor. You are all the friend we have here in this great city. If you leave us I shall, indeed, be alone."
"I will remain, my dear child, so long as there is need of my services."
He did not tell her, in so many words, that the case was hopeless; but her eye was quick to see the wasting form and the growing prostration which followed each paroxysm. How those two faithful attendants watched and waited for the end! And in the grief for the sister, the physician's gentleness found that road to a mutual devotion, which is sure to open before those who love and wait upon a common object of affection. The doctor and sister became, without a consciousness of their real feeling, mutually dependent and trusting.
In less than a month, as we have written, the skeleton which came to the feast on Christmas night departed from the house to abide on St. Victor Marchand's grave.
At the next meeting of the Institute, Doctor Graham gave a full account of the case, remarking upon the singular feature in it of the madness assuming an embodiment in the sanity of another. From much that Edith told him, as well as from his own observation and knowledge, he was convinced that, for months, the young man had detected every minute symptom and development of his disease in his sister; and had a physician been at hand, he could have traced the insidious progress of the malady in the strength of the brother's suspicions regarding his sister. The facts cited to the Institute touched the compassion of the most practice-hardened physician when Dr. Graham related the strange and pitying tenderness with which young Marchand had watched his sister, and strove to divert from her mind the madness which tainted his blood alone.
"Alone in this great city. If you leave me, I shall be alone indeed." The words were like an angel's rap upon the heart's door. In his own great trouble,—the loss of his wife,—the physician deemed himself afflicted beyond his deserts; but what was his condition compared with that of this youthful, tender, dependent woman, whose loss isolated her from all others?
No, not all others. After the first black cloud of her sorrow had drifted away, she turned to him, whose hand had sustained her, even when prayer had left her helpless and hopeless,—turned to him with a love that was more than a love, with an adoration, before which the physician bent, in wonder and satisfaction. He drew her to his bosom as something to be kept with all the truth and tenderness of an abiding love.
The dull office has been exchanged for a home that is like a palace of dreams; and Edith Graham, never forgetting her great sorrow, yet became one of the happiest of all who ever loved.