For what--for what? In the intense stillness every feeble syllable was heard. Only a minute or two more was left to make amends for the cruelty of a life. The spectators held their breath. As for the wife, whose life perhaps hung upon these syllables as much as his did, she never moved or spoke, but went on fanning, fanning, supplying to him these last billows of air for which he labored. Suddenly a change came over the dying face, the eyes with all their old eagerness turned to the doctor, asking pitifully--was it for help in the last miserable strain of nature, this terrible effort to die? Mrs. Trevanion seemed turned into stone. She stood and fanned after all need was over, solemnly winnowing the cold, penetrating air, which was touched with the additional chill of night, in waves towards the still lips which had done with that medium of life. To see her standing there, as if she had fainted or become unconscious, yet stood at her post still exercising that strange mechanical office, was the most terrible of all. The doctor came round and took her by the arm, and took the fan out of her hand. “There’s no more need for that,” he cried in a broken voice; “no more need. Let us hope he is gone to fuller air than ours.” She was so strained and stupefied that she scarcely seemed to understand this. “Hush!” she said, pulling it from his hands, “I tell you it does him good.” She had recovered the fan again and begun to put it in motion, when her eyes suddenly opened wide and fixed upon the dead face. She looked round upon them all with a great solemnity, yet surprise. “My husband is dead!” she said. “Grace,” said John Trevanion, “come away. You have done everything up to the last moment. Come, now, and rest for the sake of the living. He needs you no more.” He was himself very much moved. That which had been so long looked for, so often delayed, came now with all the force of a surprise. Rosalind, in an agony of tears, with her face hidden in the coverlid; Madam standing there, tearless, solemn, with alas, he feared, still worse before her than anything she divined; the young fatherless children outside, the boy at school, the troubles to be gone through, all rushed upon John Trevanion as he stood there. In a moment he who had been the object of all thought had abdicated or been dethroned, and even his brother thought of him no more. “For the sake of the living,” he repeated, taking his sister-in-law by the arm. The touch of her was like death; she was cold, frozen where she stood--penetrated by the wintry chill and by the passing of that chiller presence which had gone by her--but she did not resist. She suffered him to lead her away. She sank into a chair in the hall, as if she had no longer any power of her own. There she sat for a little while unmoving, and then cried out suddenly, “For the living!--for which of the living? It would be better for the living if you would bury me with him, he and I in one grave.”