At intervals Sarratt still spoke a good deal, though rarely after their third day together.  He asked her once—­’Dear, did you ever send for my letter?’ She paused a moment to think.  ’You mean the letter you left for me—­in case?’ He made a sign of assent, and then smiled into the face bending over him.  ’Read it again, darling.  I mean it all now, as I did then.’  She could only kiss him softly—­without tears.  After the first day she never cried.

On the last night of his life, when she thought that all speech was over, and that she would never hear his voice, or see a conscious look, again, he opened his eyes suddenly, and she heard—­’I love you, sweetheart!  I love you, sweetheart!’ twice over.  That was the last sound.  Towards midnight he died.

Next morning Cicely wrote to Farrell:—­

’We are coming home to-morrow after they bury him in the cemetery here.  Please get Hester—­whatever she may be doing—­to throw it up, and come and meet us.  She is the only person who can help Nelly now for a bit Nelly pines for Rydal—­where they were together.  She would go to Hester’s cottage.  Tell Hester.

’Why, old boy, do such things happen?  That’s what I keep asking—­not being a saint, like these dear nurses here, who really have been angelic.  I am the only one who rebels.  George Sarratt was so patient—­so terribly patient!  And Nelly is just crushed—­for the moment, though I sometimes expect to see a strange energy in her before long.  But I keep knocking my head all day, and part of the night—­the very small part that I’m not asleep—­against the questions that everybody seems to have asked since the world began—­and I know that I am a fool, and go on doing it.

’George Sarratt, I think, was a simple Christian, and died like one.  He seemed to like the Chaplain, which was a comfort.  How much any of that means to Nelly I don’t know.’

She also wrote to Marsworth:—­

’Meet us, please, at Charing Cross.  I have no spirit to answer your last letters as they deserve.  But I give you notice that I don’t thrive on too sweet a diet—­and praise is positively bad for me.  It wrinkles me up the wrong way.

’What can be done about that incredible sister?  She ought to know that Nelly is determined not to see her.  Just think!—­they might have had nearly a month together, and she cut it down to five days!

(’Dear Herbert, say anything you like, and the sweeter the better!)

’Yours,

‘CICELY.’

CHAPTER XVII

‘Well—­what news?’ said Farrell abruptly.  For Cicely had come into his library with a letter in her hand.  The library was a fine eighteenth-century room still preserved intact amid the general appropriation of the big house by the hospital, and when he was not busy in his office, it was his place of refuge.

Cicely perched herself on the edge of his writing-table.