"Aunt, how is she?"
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! Whatever shall I do? She is going ... she is going....
I can do nothing!"
Her thin body in the dusk flitted like a ghost about the room and then she
was gone. The doctor's pony cart came rattling up to the door. The fussy
little man got out and stamped in the hall, and then disappeared upstairs.
There was a long pause during which there was no sound.
Then the door was opened and his aunt was there.
"You must come at once ... she wants you."
The doctor, his father, and Mrs. Trussit were there in the room, but he was
only conscious of the great white bed with the candles about it and the
white vases, like eyes, watching him.
As he entered the room there was a faint cry, "Peter." He had crossed to
her, and her arms were about his shoulders and her mouth was pressed
against his; she fell back, with a little sigh, dead.
V
In the darkened dining-room, later, his father stood in the doorway with a
candle in his hand, and above it his white face and short black hair shone
as though carved from marble.
Peter came from the window towards him. His father said: "You killed her by
going to her."
Peter answered: "All these years you have been killing her!"
CHAPTER IX
THE THREE WESTCOTTS
I
The day crept, strangely and mysteriously, to its close. Peter, dulled by
misery, sat opposite his grandfather in the dining-room without moving,
conscious of the heavy twilight that the dark blinds flung about the room,
feeling the silence that was only accentuated by the old man's uneasy
"clack-clack" in his sleep and the clock's regular ticking.
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