John Randolph came up behind Evadne one morning as she was dressing the burns of a little lad who had been severely injured at a fire. She did not hear his step – she was telling a bright story to the little sufferer, to make him forget his pain, and the boy was laughing loudly. His face was very grave, but his eyes lightened as they always did when they rested upon her face.
“Mrs. Reginald Hawthorne is very ill. Can you, will you come?”
And Evadne answered with a simple “Yes.” They needed so few words, these two.
“I tell you I will not die!” The piercing cry rang through the handsome room and fell like molten lead upon the heart of the man who with strained, haggard face was sitting by the bedside. “You have not told me the truth, Reginald! There is a God. I feel it! You have always laughed and called me young and foolish, but I know better than you do, now. You said if our lives were governed by reason, we would meet death like a philosopher, and I do not know how to die! You used to laugh and say the whole thing was child’s play and there was nothing to fear, and I believed you, – I thought you were so wise, but it was easy to believe you then with your arms folded close about me and the sunlight streaming through the windows and the shouts of the children outside, but now you cannot go with me and I am afraid to go alone.” The eyes, wild and despairing, burned fiercely in the pallid cheeks. “Do you hear, Reginald? I am afraid, I tell you; horribly afraid! You used to say you would lay down your life to save me. Why do you not help me now?
“What makes you look so strangely, if it is all nonsense, Reginald? why do you shut out all the sunshine and why is the house so still? You told me once you were going to die with a laugh on your lips. I am dying, Reginald, why don’t you help your wife to die as you mean to do? A – – h!”
Her voice died away in a low wail of terror and the delicate blue veins in her temples throbbed with feverish excitement. Reginald Hawthorne had crouched down in his chair and buried his face in his hands. The pitiful cry began again.
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