One night, towards the end of the third week of August, these fits of coughing had been unusually long and bad. From about seven in the evening till long past eleven the hard, hacking sound had never ceased for an instant, and the consequent exhaustion was intense. Grania had sat the whole time with her arms about her, supporting her, and feeling, as she had often done of late, as though she herself was receiving support from that contact as well as giving it. From time to time she gave Honor some water or a little whey to drink, or renewed the dip candle which stood upon the shelf, but they hardly spoke. What, indeed, was there for them to say? Something in the dull warmth of the night, something in her own restless unhappiness, something in the sense of the nearness for Honor of that brink which, to her, too, seemed to be the end of all things made Grania even less able to bear patiently the other’s suffering that night than usual. Her love for Honor, which seemed to herself to have increased tenfold of late, her admiration for her extraordinary patience, that sort of wild anger and revolt which the suffering of those we love is apt to awaken in us, they all worked together in the girl’s mind, until at last, when the paroxysms were beginning to abate, they broke from her lips in the form of an angry protest. ‘How you do bear it, Honor--all night and day too--never a bit of ease or comfort! I do not understand it, no, I do _not_! If it was me I should just fight, and kick, and scream; yes, I should! I should curse everything, yes, everything--and God! I should curse and I should fight till I died fighting, so I would; no other!’