“It is not the first time.”
“I should have come before, but I have been pressed and driven by a hundred things.”
Instinctively she turned her face toward him on the pillow, though she could not see him because the disease had blinded her.
“Let us make no excuses to-night, Stephen. Do you know that I am dying?”
“No, Nan—not that.”
She gave a long sigh, and her hands moved to and fro over the coverlet.
“Yes. I am dying. You know why—I have sent for you.”
“What is your desire?”
He stood looking at her in some astonishment and with unwilling awe, for she whom he had always led seemed mistress of herself under the shadow of death, and not the weeping, pleading, terrified thing that he had thought to find.
“Stephen, you must go to-night.”