That, of course, was what it felt like. She had known that it would
feel like that.
And, as sometimes happens to people who are going to die and know
it, there came to her a peculiar vivid and poignant sense of her
surroundings. Of Rowcliffe's room and the things in it,--the chair he
had sat in, the pipe he had laid aside, the book he had been reading
and that he had flung away. Outside the open window the trees of the
little orchard, whitened by the moonlight, stood as if fixed in a
tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the
path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange
significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she
could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage.
It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room--like
this--for the last time.
Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her
will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was
willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable.
* * * * *
And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as
he brought her her tea.
"That's right," he said.
He was entirely reassured by her appearance.
"Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another
four-mile walk?"
She hesitated.
"It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless."
"There's no need.
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