They slept the chilly night through under the hood of the car, a night
of unbroken sleep. It was already high day when he awoke. They looked
at each other and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and
secrecy. Then they kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night.
It was so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark
reality, that they were afraid to seem to remember. They hid away the
remembrance and the knowledge.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DEATH AND LOVE
Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed impossible to
everybody that the thread of life could be drawn out so thin, and yet
not break. The sick man lay unutterably weak and spent, kept alive by
morphia and by drinks, which he sipped slowly. He was only half
conscious--a thin strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death
with the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him.
Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him
now.
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