from him and the stark roots of it stood out.
This had been his mate, this fragile little thing lying there, her
listless eyes not meeting his, her limp fingers not responding to any
touch. She had been nearer to him physically than any other human being,
and that she had been further mentally was swamped in that thought in
the hour when she was dying of the nearness.... For he had the guilty
feeling of the man whose wife dies in childbirth, and though he told
himself that whatever passing brute had wantonly hung the harmless dog
had brought about this tragedy, that could not altogether absolve him.
His poor little Phoebe--he had always known her soft heart for
animals, but even he had not guessed that the tragedy of Wanda would
affect her so--she who had seen so many animals killed with much less
sickening than he himself.

As he sat by the bed there flashed on him an irrational memory of that
day in the field when the girls had found a wounded toad amidst the
oat-sheaves, and how he had come up to them as they clustered round it
in their pale gowns. It had been Blanche who had been most articulate in
her pity, and yet Blanche had not scrupled to hurt him when it suited
her. Phoebe, till these months of irritation and the dislike which had
seemed to spring in her, had never wilfully hurt anyone. He felt he knew
all of Phoebe there had been to know, and his heart softened over her
as she slipped away from any power of his to tell her so.

That flattened little form under the crumpled coverlet was Phoebe's,
was the same body with which she had given him so much delight. This was
the Phoebe who had hung about his neck in the valley and smothered his
words upon his lips with kisses--she who had taught him her own
knowledge of love, that instinctive knowledge of Aspasia and her
sisters; it was through her he had become a man. So he felt now looking
at her.

With dawn, the day after the child's birth, it became plain that she
could hold the frail thread of her life no longer. The nurse sat on one
side of the bed; the doctor had not yet come back after leaving to
attend another case. The child lay beside her, because the only time she
spoke or showed any interest that night she had asked for it. Now she
lay either asleep or already unconscious, her hair all pushed away from
her face, which had fallen into hollows. She looked far older than her
years--older than it would have been possible to imagine she ever could
look.