And now the end came swiftly. I had hurriedly furnished a couple of
rooms in the little house, now ours, that I might take my mother into
the purer air of Norwood, and permission was given to drive her down
in an invalid carriage. The following evening she was suddenly taken
worse; we lifted her into bed, and telegraphed for the doctor. But he
could do nothing, and she herself felt that the hand of Death had
gripped her. Selfless to the last, she thought but for my loneliness.
"I am leaving you alone," she sighed from time to time; and truly I
felt, with an anguish I did not dare to realise, that when she died I
should indeed be alone on earth.

For two days longer she was with me, my beloved, and I never left her
side for five minutes. On May 10th the weakness passed into gentle
delirium, but even then the faithful eyes followed me about the room,
until at length they closed for ever, and as the sun sank low in the
heavens, the breath came slower and slower, till the silence of Death
came down upon us and she was gone.

Stunned and dazed with the loss, I went mechanically through the next
few days. I would have none touch my dead save myself and her
favourite sister, who was with us at the last. Cold and dry-eyed I
remained, even when they hid her from me with the coffin-lid, even all
the dreary way to Kensal Green where her husband and her baby-son were
sleeping, and when we left her alone in the chill earth, damp with the
rains of spring. I could not believe that our day-dream was dead and
buried, and the home in ruins ere yet it was fairly built. Truly, my
"house was left unto me desolate," and the rooms, filled with sunshine
but unlighted by her presence, seemed to echo from their bare walls,
"You are all alone."