oss to him.

"What is it dear?" she asked.

"Nothing!" he said. "Don't those windmill sails look monotonous?"

He sat holding her hand. He could not talk nor think. It was a comfort,
however, to sit holding her hand. She was dissatisfied and miserable. He
was not with her; she was nothing.

And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at the black,
heavy sea.

"She will never give in," he said quietly.

Clara's heart sank.

"No," she replied.

"There are different ways of dying. My father's people are frightened,
and have to be hauled out of life into death like cattle into a
slaughter-house, pulled by the neck; but my mother's people are pushed
from behind, inch by inch. They are stubborn people, and won't die."

"Yes," said Clara.

"And she won't die. She can't. Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in the other
day. 'Think!' he said to her; 'you will have your mother and father, and
your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.' And she said: 'I have
done without them for a long time, and CAN do without them now. It is
the living I want, not the dead.' She wants to live even now."

"Oh, how horrible!" said Clara, too frightened to speak.

"And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me," he went on
monotonously. "She's got such a will, it seems as if she would never
go--never!"

"Don't think of it!" cried Clara.

"And she was religious--she is religious now--but it is no good. She
simply won't give in. And do you know, I said to her on Thursday:
'Mother, if I had to die, I'd die. I'd WILL to die.' And she said to
me, sharp: 'Do you think I haven't? Do you think you can die when you
like?'"

His voice ceased. He did not cry, only went on speaking monotonously.
Clara wanted to run. She looked round. There was the black, re-echoing
shore, the dark sky down on her. She got up terrified. She wanted to be
where there was light, where there were other people. She wanted to be
away from him. He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.

"And I don't want her to eat," he said, "and she knows it. When I ask
her: 'Shall you have anything' she's almost afraid to say 'Yes.' 'I'll
have a cup of Benger's,' she says. 'It'll only keep your strength up,'
I said to her. 'Yes'--and she almost cried--'but there's such a gnawing
when I eat nothing, I can't bear it.' So I went and made her the food.
It's the cancer that gnaws like that at her. I wish she'd die!"

"Come!" said Clara roughly. "I'm going."