Then he told me to leave him
and the dog altogether alone. I was to shut the door upon him. The dog
would tell me when to open it again. I obeyed him and waited outside the
door until one o'clock. Then a loud sudden howl moaned through the
house." She stopped for a while. This pause was the only sign of
distress which she gave, and in a few moments she went on, speaking
quite simply, without any of the affectations of grief. "It was trying
to wait outside that door while the afternoon faded and the night came.
It was night, of course, long before the end. He would have no lamp left
in his room. One imagined him just the other side of that thin
door-panel, lying very still and silent in the great four-poster bed
with his face towards the hills, and the light falling. One imagined the
room slipping away into darkness, and the windows continually looming
into a greater importance, and the dog by his side and no one else,
right to the very end. He would have it that way, but it was rather hard
for me."
Durrance said nothing in reply, but gave her in full measure what she
most needed, the sympathy of his silence. He imagined those hours in the
passage, six hours of twilight and darkness; he could picture her
standing close by the door, with her ear perhaps to the panel, and her
hand upon her heart to check its loud beating.
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