Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that threatened to grow more pronounced.

“I am ready, Dick,” she said faintly, still with closed eyes. “I want to make my sleepy, sleepy noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold my hand like you did before in the little death.”

She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not look, for he knew love was in that last look of hers, as he knew it would be when she looked into his eyes at the last.

“Once,” she explained to Graham, “I had to go on the table, and I made Dick go with me into the anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I went under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken dark, the little death in life. It was very easy.”