The stillness of the phrase--the helplessness. She sat down in the chair by him again. It seemed so absurd not to call him back--so impotent. He looked unguarded. If--if he should die he would go--wherever it was--there must be a future for a soul like Gregory’s somewhere--he would go alone. Cruel. She thought of the child growing within her. How much more gentle was birth than death. Gentle and gradual and kind. It was shared, but this horrible singleness of dying-- She had supper in the nurse’s kitchen. The nurses were kind to her, faintly curious, preoccupied, full of that gayety so characteristic of nurses when for an hour they can slip out of the technique of the manner which they affect and become informal, unrestrained. The shadow of Gregory’s crisis rested on them not at all, Freda thought. She was not resentful. But she ate to please the nurse who had managed to get the supper for her and then went quickly back to Gregory. If it should happen when she was away! It must not. She must go there to keep it from happening. Surely she could. Surely she could. She did not sleep. The nurse watched on one side, she on the other, the nurse nodding a little and Freda shaking off the fearful drowsiness that came over her too. She did not want to sleep. She was afraid that if she slept, it might happen. It was like sentry duty. As long as she was awake such a thing would not happen. She did not name death in her thoughts. It was like invoking a presence. She understood trite phrases as she thought--the triteness of “he has left us,” “passed on,” “was called.” How those phrases irked her in the newspapers sometimes. But they were true. It was like that. She heard the soft rise and fall of the nurse’s breathing. She was asleep--no, not quite. Now and then he moved a little. His troubled breathing seemed to sigh, slight, weary sighs. Freda bent close over him. Here we are, she thought, he and I and him within me. We must stay close, closer than death can come. Three hours later, with the gray light coming so early into the room, the nurse, who had slept a little, roused herself, busy immediately with the routine of temperature taking, her cap a little askew, her face puffed with uncompleted sleep. “Well, we got through that night all right,” she said cheerfully, softly. “And our patient looks better, Mrs. Macmillan. Look at him--doesn’t he?” Freda looked shakily at him. It seemed almost true. He seemed to be sleeping almost naturally. “Then you think he’s come through?” she ventured. The nurse straightened her cap professionally. “Well, I should say that bad turn he took last night would be the last. He’ll be coming along now. We’ll get some nourishment into him pretty soon. You go over to the hotel and get some sleep--no, lie down here on my cot. You look weak.” * * * * *