“Have you been sitting here all the time while I slept, dear?” she asked.  “Have you been waiting for me to come back to you?”

“Yes, and you have come,” he said.

She looked at him, and the mother-love, which before had been veiled and clouded, came out with all the tender radiance of evening sun, with the clear shining after rain.

“I knew you wouldn’t fail me, my darling,” she said.  “You were so patient with me in the trouble I have been through.  It was a nightmare, but it has gone.”

Michael bent forward and kissed her.

“Yes, mother,” he said, “it has all gone.”

She was silent a moment.

“Is your father here?” she said.

“No; but he will come at once, if you would like to see him.”

“Yes, send for him, dear, if it would not vex him to come,” she said; “or get somebody else to send; I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I’m not going to,” said he.

The nurse went to the door, gave some message, and presently returned to the other side of the bed.  Then Lady Ashbridge spoke again.

“Is this death?” she asked.

Michael raised his eyes to the figure standing by the bed.  She nodded to him.

He bent forward again.

“Yes, dear mother,” he said.

For a moment her eyes dilated, then grew quiet again, and the smile returned to her mouth.

“I’m not frightened, Michael,” she said, “with you there.  It isn’t lonely or terrible.”

She raised her head.

“My son!” she said in a voice loud and triumphant.  Then her head fell back again, and she lay with face close to his, and her eyelids quivered and shut.  Her breath came slow and regular, as if she slept.  Then he heard that she missed a breath, and soon after another.  Then, without struggle at all, her breathing ceased. . . .  And outside on the lawn close by the open window the thrush still sang.

It was an hour later when Michael left, having waited for his father’s arrival, and drove to town through the clear, falling dusk.  He was conscious of no feeling of grief at all, only of a complete pervading happiness.  He could not have imagined so perfect a close, nor could he have desired anything different from that imperishable moment when his mother, all trouble past, had come back to him in the serene calm of love. . . .

As he entered London he saw the newsboards all placarded with one fact:  England had declared war on Germany.

He went, not to his own flat, but straight to Maidstone Crescent.  With those few minutes in which his mother had known him, the stupor that had beset his emotions all day passed off, and he felt himself longing, as he had never longed before, for Sylvia’s presence.  Long ago he had given her all that he knew of as himself; now there was a fresh gift.  He had to give her all that those moments had taught him.  Even as already they were knitted into him, made part of him, so must they be to her. . . .  And when they had shared that, when, like water gushing from a spring she flooded him, there was that other news which he had seen on the newsboards that they had to share together.