said, with a tremor in his voice;
'he is going to a more distant country.'

I did not start or cry; I did not comprehend the meaning of his words. I
sat silent, looking at him. He came to me, took both my hands in his:
'Hush!' he said; 'don't cry aloud--it would disturb him. But I must tell
you the truth: he won't live three days.' I understood it all now--took
in the _full_ meaning of his dreadful words. I did not cry or faint; I
did not even weep; I thought my heart was bleeding--that the blood was
actually oozing from it drop by drop. I clung to the doctor as I would
to the strong arm of an earthly saviour with wild entreaty, with
passionate appeal. I prayed him to save my darling, as if he held within
his grasp the keys of life and death. I offered all my wealth; I made
unheard-of vows--promised impossible things. In the anguish of my
supplication, I fell at his very feet. 'My dear,' he said, as he raised
me tenderly up again, 'even in this world there is a limit to wealth's
potent power; it is always powerless in a time like this.' I had sunk
into a chair, exhausted by emotion, and chill with dread, my face buried
in my hands despairingly. He laid his hand upon my head in fatherly
compassion: 'It's what we've all got to come to, sooner or later,' he
went on, tremulously. 'As life goes on, our hopes die out one by one;
and, one after another, death claims our treasures. Bow to what is
inevitable; pray for resignation.'

I couldn't--I wouldn't. I prayed for _his_ life, yet in a hopeless,
despairing way. To the All-powerful my soul went out continually in one
wild, desperate cry. I battled fiercely with that stern impending fate,
yet I felt from the first how vainly. Around my poor, wounded, dying
boy, night and day I hovered constantly--I would not leave him for an
instant. Every hour was bearing him away from me--drifting him farther
and farther out into an unknown sea. I crept to his side when I could do
nothing more for him, and laid my head beside his on the pillow.
Sometimes I slept there for very sorrow, grasping him instinctively the
while, seeking even in sleep, with fierce, rebellious will, to stem the
invisible tide of that dark river, and bear him back to life. 'He would
not live three days,' the doctor had said: he _did_ live just _three
days._ It was on the evening of the third, just as the day was fading,
that he called me softly to him. I had opened the window and put back
the curtain, to admit the a