Eunane was seldom insensible or
even delirious, and her quick intelligence caught very speedily the
meaning of my close attendance, and of the distress which neither
Velna nor I could wholly conceal. She asked and extracted from me what
I knew of the origin of her illness, and answered, with a far stronger
feeling than I should have expected even from her--
"If I am to die, I am glad it should be through trying to serve and
please Eveena.... It may seem strange, Clasfempta," she went on
presently, "scarcely possible perhaps; but my love for her is not only
greater than the love I bear you, but is so bound up with it that I
always think of you together, and love you the better that I love her,
and that you love her so much better than me.... But," she resumed
later, "it is hard to die, and die so young. I had never known what
happiness meant till I came here.... I have been so happy here, and I
was happier each day in feeling that I no longer made Eveena or you
less happy. Ah! let me thank you and Eveena while I can for
everything, and above all for Velna.... But," after another long
pause, "it is terrible and horrible--never to wake, to move, to hear
your voices, to see you, to look upon the sunlight, to think, or even
to dream again! Once, to remove a tooth and straighten the rest, they
made me senseless; and that sinking into senselessness, though I knew
I should waken in a minute, was horrible; and--to sink into
senselessness from which I shall never waken!"
She was sinking fast indeed, and this terror of death, so seldom seen
in the dying, grew apparently deeper and more intense as death drew
near.
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