The evenings brightened by that hope, the mornings darkened by its extinction, the rare hours of brooding, the days and weeks of brave struggle, of tendance never failing, of smiles veiling a sick heart--she lived all these again, looking pitifully back, straining tenderly in her arms the dear being she loved.
And then, stabbing her back to life in the midst of her exhaustion, the thought pierced her that even now she was hastening the end by her absence.

They would be asking for her below; they must be asking for her already.

The supper-time was come, was past, perhaps; and she was not there! She tried to picture what would happen, what already must be happening; and rising and dashing the tears from her face she stood listening.

Perhaps Claude would make some excuse to the others; or, perhaps--how much had he guessed?
Her mother was passive now, sunk in the torpor which followed the attack and from which the poor woman would awake in happy unconsciousness of the whole.

Anne saw that her charge might be left, and hastily smoothing the tangle of luxuriant hair which had fallen about her face, she opened the door.