An instant later
she had burst into my room, with her face convulsed with
terror.
"My God!" she cried, "he's gone!"
I caught up my dressing-gown and rushed into the next
room.
Poor little Fred was stretched sideways across his
bed, quite dead. He looked as if he had been rising and
had fallen backwards. His face was so peaceful and
smiling that I could hardly have recognised the worried,
fever-worn features of yesterday. There is great
promise, I think, on the faces of the dead. They say it
is but the post-mortem relaxation of the muscles, but
it is one of the points on which I should like to see
science wrong.
Miss Williams and I stood for five minutes without a
word, hushed by the presence of that supreme fact. Then
we laid him straight, and drew the sheet over him. She
knelt down and prayed and sobbed, while I sat on the bed,
with the cold hand in mine. Then my heart turned to lead
as I remembered that it lay for me to break the news to
the mother.
However, she took it most admirably. They were all
three at breakfast when I came round, the general, Mrs.
La Force, and the daughter. Somehow they seemed to know
all that I had to say at the very sight of me; and in
their womanly unselfishness their sympathy was all for
me, for the shock I had suffered, and the disturbance of
my household. I found myself turned from the consoler
into the consoled. For an hour or more we talked it
over, I explaining what I hope needed no
explanation, that as the poor boy could not tell me his
symptoms it was hard for me to know how immediate was his
danger.
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