It was an effort to her to collect her thoughts—but she did collect them. She was able to tell him what was in her mind.
“Do you think, Ovid, your mother will care much what becomes of me, when I die?”
He started at those dreadful words—so softly, so patiently spoken. “You will live,” he said. “My Carmina, what am I here for but to bring you back to life?”
She made no attempt to dispute with him. Quietly, persistently, she returned to the thought that was in her.
“Say that I forgive your mother, Ovid—and that I only ask one thing in return. I ask her to leave me to you, when the end has come. My dear, there is a feeling in me that I can’t get over. Don’t let me be buried in a great place all crowded with the dead! I once saw a picture—it was at home in Italy, I think—an English picture of a quiet little churchyard in the country. The shadows of the trees rested on the lonely graves. And some great poet had written—oh, such beautiful words about it. The red-breast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground. Promise, Ovid, you will take me to some place, far from crowds and noise—where children may gather the flowers on my grave.”
He promised—and she thanked him, and rested again.
“There was something else,” she said, when the interval had passed. “My head is so sleepy. I wonder whether I can think of it?”
After a while, she did think of it.
“I want to make you a little farewell present. Will you undo my gold chain? Don’t cry, Ovid! oh, don’t cry!”
He obeyed her. The gold chain held the two lockets—the treasured portraits of her father and her mother. “Wear them for my sake,” she murmured. “Lift me up; I want to put them round your neck myself.” She tried, vainly tried, to clasp the chain. Her head fell back on his breast. “Too sleepy,” she said; “always too sleepy now! Say you love me, Ovid.”