e longing for an east wind that
should kill the fever, yet dreading lest it should blow the fever in on
them; a strange still harbor, its great peaceful river darkened only by
that blot where the sun-soaked craft swung at her anchor; a strange still
craft, where nothing stirred but one slender form, one little being that
went about laying wet cloths upon this rude sailor's head, broken ice
between the lips of that one, moistening dry palms, measuring out cooling
draughts, and only resting now and then to watch one sleeper sleep, to
hang and hear if in that deep dream there were any breathing and it were
not the last sleep of all. And in Louie's heart there was something just
as strange and still as in all other things throughout that wearing,
blinding day; but with her the calm was not of fear, only of unspeakable
joy; for if Andrew lived it was she that had saved him, and though he
died, his delirium had told her that his heart was hers. "If he dies, he
is mine!" she cried triumphantly, forgetting all the long struggle of
scruple and doubt, "and if he lives, he shall never be hers!" she cried
softly and with that inner voice that no one hears.

And so the heat slipped down with the sun to other horizons, coolness
crept in upon the running river's breast with the dusk, dew gathered and
lay darkly glittering on rail and spar and shroud as star by star stole
out to sparkle in it; and Andrew raised his eyes at length, and they
rested long and unwaveringly on the little figure sitting not far away
with hands crossed about the knees and eyes looking out into the last
light--the tranquil, happy face from which a white handkerchief kept back
the flying hair while giving it the likeness of a nun's. Was it a dream?
Was it Louie? Or was it only some one of the tormenting phantoms that for
so many burning days had haunted him? He tried in vain to ask: his tongue
clove to the roof of his mouth; he seemed to be in the power of one of
those fierce nightmares where life depends on a word and the word is not
to be spoken. Only a vision, then: he closed his lids thinking it would be
gone when he lifted them, but he did not want it to be gone, and looked
again to find it as before. And by and by it seemed to him that long
since, in a far-off dream, he had gathered strength and uttered the one
thought of his fever, "Louie, what do you do now?" and she had answered
him, as though she thought aloud, "I stroke the dead;" and he had cried
out,