On the evening when disease laid its heavy hand upon her and defeated her plans for telling her son George of the eight hundred dollars hidden away, she got out of bed and crept half across the room pleading with death for another hour of life.  “Wait, dear!  The boy!  The boy!  The boy!” she pleaded as she tried with all of her strength to fight off the arms of the lover she had wanted so earnestly.

* * *

Elizabeth died one day in March in the year when her son George became eighteen, and the young man had but little sense of the meaning of her death.  Only time could give him that.  For a month he had seen her lying white and still and speechless in her bed, and then one afternoon the doctor stopped him in the hallway and said a few words.

The young man went into his own room and closed the door.  He had a queer empty feeling in the region of his stomach.  For a moment he sat staring at, the floor and then jumping up went for a walk.  Along the station platform he went, and around through residence streets past the high-school building, thinking almost entirely of his own affairs.  The notion of death could not get hold of him and he was in fact a little annoyed that his mother had died on that day.  He had just received a note from Helen White, the daughter of the town banker, in answer to one from him.  “Tonight I could have gone to see her and now it will have to be put off,” he thought half angrily.

Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at three o’clock.  It had been cold and rainy in the morning but in the afternoon the sun came out.  Before she died she lay paralyzed for six days unable to speak or move and with only her mind and her eyes alive.  For three of the six days she struggled, thinking of her boy, trying to say some few words in regard to his future, and in her eyes there was an appeal so touching that all who saw it kept the memory of the dying woman in their minds for years.  Even Tom Willard, who had always half resented his wife, forgot his resentment and the tears ran out of his eyes and lodged in his mustache.  The mustache had begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye.  There was oil in the preparation he used for the purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like vapor.  In his grief Tom Willard’s face looked like the face of a little dog that has been out a long time in bitter weather.

George came home along Main Street at dark on the day of his mother’s death and, after going to his own room to brush his hair and clothes, went along the hallway and into the room where the body lay.  There was a candle on the dressing table by the door and Doctor Reefy sat in a chair by the bed.  The doctor arose and started to go out.  He put out his hand as though to greet the younger man and then awkwardly drew it back again.  The air of the room was heavy with the presence of the two self-conscious human beings, and the man hurried away.