Before which reflection Death came closer and looked kind; and the thought of his hand was cool and comforting, as the hand of a grey moor mist sweeping over the heath after fiery days of cloudless sun.  Death stood very near and beckoned at the dark portals of her thought.  Behind him there shone a great light, and in the light stood Clem; but the Shadow filled all the foreground.  To go to her loved one, to die quickly and take their mutual secret with her, seemed a right and a precious thought just then; to go, to die, while yet he lay above the earth, was a determination that had even a little power to solace her agony.  She thought of meeting him standing alone, strange, friendless on the other side of the grave; she told herself that actual duty, if not the vast love she bore him, pointed along the unknown road he had so recently followed.  It was but justice to him.  Then she could laugh at Time and Fate and the juggling unseen Controller who had played with him and her, had wrecked their little lives, forced their little passions under a sham security, then snapped the thread on which she hung for everything, killed the better part of herself, and left her all alone without a hand to shield or a heart to pity.  In the darkness, as the moon stole away and her chamber window blackened, she sounded all sorrow’s wide and solemn diapason; and the living sank into shadows before her mind’s accentuated and vivid picture of the dead.  Future life loomed along one desolate pathway that led to pain and shame and griefs as yet untasted.  The rocks beside the way hid shadowy shapes of the unfriendly; for no mother’s kindly hand would support her, no brother’s stout arm would be lifted for her when they knew.  No pure, noble, fellow-creature might be asked for aid, not one might be expected to succour and cherish in the great strait sweeping towards her.  Some indeed there were to look to for the moment, but their voices and their eyes would harden presently, when they knew.

She told herself they must never know; and the solution to the problem of how to keep her secret appeared upon the threshold of the unknown road her lover had already travelled.  Now, at the echo of the lowest notes, while she lay with uneven pulses and shaking limbs, it seemed that she was faced with the parting of the ways and must make instant choice.  Time would not wait for her and cared nothing whether she chose life or death for her road.  She struggled with red thoughts, and fever burnt her lips and stabbed her forehead.  Clement was gone.  In this supreme hour no fellow-creature could fortify her courage or direct her tottering judgment.  Once she thought of prayer and turned from it shuddering with a passionate determination to pray no more.  Then the vision of Death shadowed her and she felt his brief sting would be nothing beside the endless torment of living.  Dangerous thoughts developed quickly in her and grew to giants.  Something clamoured to her and cried that delay, even of hours, was impossible and must be fatal to secrecy.  A feverish yearning to get it over, and that quickly, mastered her, and she began huddling on some clothes.