“No, not yet; I can’t go yet--though I wish it, too,” she said. “There are still horrid bits--dreadful dark places--like the dreadful poem--the poem of you, Gavan--where I lose myself; burning places, edges of pain, where I fight to find myself again; long, dim places where I dream--dream--. I won’t have you see me like that; you might think that you watched the scattering of the real me. I won’t have you remember me all dim and broken.” Her voice was sinking from her into an abyss of languor, and she felt the swirl of phantom thoughts blurring her mind even while she spoke. As on that far-away night when he held her hand and they stood together under the stars, she said, speaking now her prayer, “O God! God!”; and seeming in the effort of her will to lift a weight that softly, inexorably, like the lid of a tomb, pressed down upon her, “I am here,” she said. “You are mine. I will not be afraid. Remember me. So good-by, Gavan.” “I will remember,” he said. His arms still held her. And through his mind an army seemed to rush, galloping, with banners, with cries of lamentations, agony, regret, passionate rebellion. It crashed in conflict, blood beneath it, and above it tempests and torn banners. And the banners were desperate hopes riddled with bullets; and the blood was love poured out and the tempest was his heart. It was, he thought, even while he saw, listened, felt, the last onslaught upon his soul. She was going--the shadow of life was sliding from her--and from him, for she was life and its terror and beauty. Above the turmoil was the fated peace. He had won it, unwillingly. He could not be kept from it even by the memory that would stay. But though he knew, and, in knowing, saw his contemplative soul far from this scene of suffocating misery, Eppie, his dear, his beautiful, was in his arms, her eyes, her lips, her heart. He would never see her again. He raised his head to look his last, and, like a faint yet piercing perfume, her soul’s smile still dwelt on him as she lay there speechless. For the moment--and was not the moment eternity?--the triumph was all hers. The moment, when long, long past, would still be part of him and her triumph in it eternal. To spare her the sight of his anguish would be to rob her. Anguish had been and was the only offering he could make her. He felt--felt unendurably, she would see that; he suffered, he loved her, unspeakably; she had that, too, while, in their last long silence, he held her hands against his heart. And her eyes, still smiling on him with their transcendent faith, showed that her triumph was shadowless. * * * * * He heard next day that she had died during the night.