“Edith?” he echoed with surprise; and, after a moment’s thought, added quietly, “Yes, I recollect seeing her. She helped me a great deal, I think, dear child!”
“Would you like to see her?” his mother asked. “She has only just left the room.”
“Not now, mother,” he answered. “She will come presently. I cannot talk much now.”
He closed his eyes again, and lay in that delicious trance of convalescence, when simply to breathe is enough for contentment—the lips slightly parted, the form absolutely at rest, the eyes not so closed but a faint twilight enters through the lashes—a sweet, happy mood. When his mother moved softly about, Dick lifted his lids now and then, but was not disturbed. Sometimes, before closing them again, his half-seeing eyes dwelt a moment on some object in the room. After one of these dreamy glances, there entered through his lashes the vision of a face that seemed to cry aloud to him a piercing summons.
He started up as if electrified, and stretched his arms out. “Stay! stay!” he cried, and saw that it was no vision, but a pictured, saintly face, with tears on the cheeks, and lips from which a message seemed to have just escaped.
“Dick, what is the matter?” his mother exclaimed in terror.
He sank back on the pillows. “I saw it before, and thought it was a dream,” he whispered. “I was thinking of it as I lay here.”
“The picture?” his mother asked. “Edith hung it there. I will take it away if you don’t like it.”
“I do like it,” he answered faintly. “It is a blessed, blessed vision.” He lay looking at it a while, then slipped his hand under the pillow and found a little crucifix that he had always kept there. At the beginning of his illness his mother had taken it away, but Edith had returned and kept it there, seeing that he sometimes sought for it. He drew it forth now, pressed it passionately to his lips, then, holding it in the open palm of his hand, on the pillow, turned his cheek to it with a gesture of childlike fondness. “O my Love!” he whispered.
“Shall I tell Edith to come in?” his mother asked, catching the whisper.