At the moment of death the memory of love reigns triumphant over all else, but she still felt the dazed sense of injury that her father should have spoken so to her.

She could hear the low murmur of voices in her mother's room across the hall.
Suddenly the cries and moans ceased.

A great joy irradiated the child.

She said to herself that her mother was better, that the doctor had given her something to help her.
She got off the bed, wrapped her little pink garment around her, and stole across the hall to her mother's room.

The whole hall was filled with a strange, sweet smell which made her faint, but along with the faintness came such an increase of joy that it was almost ecstasy.
She turned the knob of her mother's door, but, before she could open it, it was opened from the other side, and her father's face, haggard and resentful as she had never seen it, appeared.
"Go back!" he whispered, fiercely.
"Oh, father, is mother better ?" "Go back!" Maria went back, and again the tempest of woe and injury swept over her.