The hand that grasped her drew her firmly back to earth and held her there.
In her disappointment she could have wept, so vital, so entrancing, had been the vision.

Piteously she tried to plead with him, but it was as though an obscuring veil had been dropped upon her.

She could only utter unintelligible murmurings.

She sought for words and found them not.
And then she heard his voice quite close to her, very tender and reassuring.
"Don't vex yourself, sweetheart! It's all right--all right." His hand smoothed her brow; she almost fancied that he kissed her hair, but she was not certain and it did not seem to matter.

Surely nothing could ever matter again since the closing of that door! A brief confusion was hers, a brief wandering in dark places, and then a slow deepening of the dark, the spreading of a great silence....
The last thing she heard was the steady ticking of a watch that someone held close to her.