The convulsions had ceased, but his mind was wandering and his speech was rambling.  It was easy to tell of what he was thinking.  He was a little boy in the woodland home with his mother again, and was telling her delightedly of what he had seen and found, and of the yellow mandrake apples he had stored in a hollow log.  She should help him eat them.  And then the scene would shift, and he was older, and we were together in the fields.  He called to me excitedly to take the dog to the other side of the brush-heap, for the woodchuck was slipping through that way!  There was the old merry ring in his voice, and I knew where he was and how there came to him, in fancy, the sweet perfumes of the fields, and how his eyes, which were opened wide but saw us not, were blessed with all the greenness and the glory of the summer of long ago.  Then his manner changed, and the word “Jean” came softly to his lips, and again I knew they were camping out together, and he was teaching to his wife the pleasant mysteries of the forest, and all woodcraft.  There was love in his tones and in his features.  The breast of the woman holding his hand heaved, and the pallor on her face grew more.

There was another struggle for breath, then a desperate one, and with its end came consciousness.  Grant smiled and spoke faintly: 

“It must he pretty near the end.  I am very tired.  Jean, darling, get closer to me.  Kiss me.”

She leaned over and kissed him passionately.  He smiled again, then feebly took one of her little hands in each of his and lifted them to his face and kissed them; then held them down upon his eyes.  There was a single heave of his great chest, and he was dead.

And the woman who fell to the floor was, apparently, as lifeless as the silent figure on the bed.

She was not dead.  We carried her to her own room—­hers and his, with the dressing-rooms attached—­and she woke at last to a consciousness of her world bereft of one human being who had been to her nearly all there was.  She was not as we had imagined she would be when she recovered.  She was not hysterical, nor did she weep.  She was singularly quiet.  But that set, thoughtful look had never left her face.  She seemed some other person.  I talked to her of what was to be done.  What a task that was, for I could scarcely utter words myself.  She suddenly brightened when I spoke of the crematory and what Grant’s wishes were.

“It must be as he wished,” she said—­“as he wished, in each small detail.”  Then she said no more, and all the rest was left to me.

She was quiet and grave at the funeral of her husband and my friend.  She shed no tears; she uttered not a word.  She listened quietly while I told her how I had arranged to carry out all his wishes about himself, or, rather, about his tenement.  She did not accompany me.  There came with me on that journey only the Ape, who was red of eye and vainly trying to conceal it all.  How the youth was suffering!