“Oh, don’t say that,” he pleaded weakly. “I have an attack like this very often now.”
She held out her hand and he grasped it with feeble fingers.
“It has been heaven to see you again,” he whispered. “Now I can die happy.”
Anne knelt down by the chair. From her aching eyes brimmed scalding tears.
“You are going to get well, dear,” she murmured, “we are going to make him, aren’t we, Vittorio?”
But the end was not yet. Several weeks were to pass first. Meanwhile, Anne went to the villa every day. Once or twice, when Alexis felt stronger, they played a little. But he tired almost immediately. After a while they gave it up tragically, tacitly. She read to him instead. And they talked a little. But day by day he grew perceptibly weaker, and the coughing spells racked him with greater ferocity.
One day a letter came from Jack at Eton, accepting with glee Anne’s invitation for the holidays. And Alexis, realizing that the end was near, listened with joy as Anne read it to him, and added of her own accord that she and Vittorio wanted to look after the boy in the future.
“In that way,” she added almost timidly, “I can be a mother to him after all.”
Alexis made no reply. He merely raised emaciated hands to his face, and Anne saw that he wept.