“At times, knowing that if we stopped another moment in these rooms we should scream, we would steal softly out and rush downstairs, and, shutting ourselves out of hearing in a cellar underneath the yard, laugh till we reeled against the dirty walls.  I think we were both getting a little mad.

“One day—­it was the third of that nightmare life, so I learned afterwards, though for all I could have told then it might have been the three hundredth, for Time seemed to have fled from that house as from a dream, so that all things were tangled—­I made a slip that came near to ending the matter, then and there.

“I had gone into that other room.  Jeanie had left her post for a moment, and the place was empty.

“I did not think what I was doing.  I had not closed my eyes that I can remember since the wife had died, and my brain and my senses were losing their hold of one another.  I went through my usual performance of talking loudly to the thing underneath the white sheet, and noisily patting the pillows and rattling the bottles on the table.

“On my return, he asked me how she was, and I answered, half in a dream, ‘Oh, bonny, she’s trying to read a little,’ and he raised himself on his elbow and called out to her, and for answer there came back silence—­not the silence that is silence, but the silence that is as a voice.  I do not know if you understand what I mean by that.  If you had lived among the dead as long as I have, you would know.

“I darted to the door and pretended to look in.  ‘She’s fallen asleep,’ I whispered, closing it; and he said nothing, but his eyes looked queerly at me.

“That night, Jeanie and I stood in the hall talking.  He had fallen to sleep early, and I had locked the door between the two rooms, and put the key in my pocket, and had stolen down to tell her what had happened, and to consult with her.

“‘What can we do!  God help us, what can we do!’ was all that Jeanie could say.  We had thought that in a day or two he would be stronger, and that the truth might be broken to him.  But instead of that he had grown so weak, that to excite his suspicions now by moving him or her would be to kill him.

“We stood looking blankly in each other’s faces, wondering how the problem could be solved; and while we did so the problem solved itself.

“The one woman-servant had gone out, and the house was very silent—­so silent that I could hear the ticking of Jeanie’s watch inside her dress.  Suddenly, into the stillness there came a sound.  It was not a cry.  It came from no human voice.  I have heard the voice of human pain till I know its every note, and have grown careless to it; but I have prayed God on my knees that I may never hear that sound again, for it was the sob of a soul.

“It wailed through the quiet house and passed away, and neither of us stirred.

“At length, with the return of the blood to our veins, we went upstairs together.  He had crept from his own room along the passage into hers.  He had not had strength enough to pull the sheet off, though he had tried.  He lay across the bed with one hand grasping hers.”