She sat, with Farrell's
head resting against her knee, and still gazed unmoved. . . . Then I
knew why. She had passed beyond these vain phenomena. Her eyes saw
them and saw them not. . . . She was dying.
"Yet she sat erect. She even smiled, very faintly, and made a feeble
motion of the hand towards her guitar-case, which I had lifted out of
the reach of the blood and set on the seat at a little distance from
her. Then I understood that she _had_ seen, after all. . . . For I
must tell you that, in the early days, Santa's playing and singing
had brought great cheer to the crews, and our boat was envied for
carrying this music. But there had come a day when Jarvis and Prout
sent aft very respectfully to beg that there might be no more of it,
for it dragged across their raw nerves: and from that hour the guitar
had lain in its case. It could be set free now.
"I took it out, and she half held out her arms for it, as a mother
might for her newly-born child. . . . But she would never play on it
again. The strings were all loose but one, and that one broken.
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