The man upon the bed!--Outside the fatherhood, outside the physical relation between them--there he was, a human being with death hovering above. It was easier to think of him just as a fellow-being; she laid hold of that thought and kept it. A fellow-mortal--a fellow-mortal. With a strange sense of relief, she let the images and words and the painful straining for some filial feeling pass from her soul. She did not know why she should feel toward him filially; he had not, like her mother, suffered to give her life; he had probably never thought of her; she had not been to him the concern in the matter. Nor hardly since had he acted parentally toward her. With a wry humour she had to concede the winter in New York, the summer at the New Springs, but it hardly seemed that the sacrifice could have been great, or that the need for gratitude was extreme. Her soul rose against any hypocrisy. She could not and she would not try to say, "Dear father--dear father!" The vision of her mother rose beside her.... But just to think of him as a human being--she could do that; a man lying there on the knife edge of the present, with the vast, unplumbed gulf before him.... That dream of the blue sea and the palm trees and the low pale-coloured houses returned to mind, but she put it from her somewhat shudderingly. He had looked so abounding in life, so vivid and vital, with the white hat like a helmet!... A fellow-mortal, lying there, helpless and suffering....
At three in the morning the physician in charge, who had been sitting for some time beside the bed, rose and moved away. He nodded his head to his fellow. Hagar caught the satisfaction in the gesture even before, in passing her chair, he paused to say just audibly, "I think your father will recover." A short time passed, and then the Colonel touched her arm. "They think it safe for us to go. He is stronger. Come! They'll call if there is any need, but they don't think there will be."
Going, she stopped for a moment close beside the bed. She had not been this near before. Medway lay there, with his head swathed in bandages, with his lips and chin unshorn, with no colour now in his cheeks, with his eyes closed. Hagar felt the sudden smart of tears between her own lids. The gold thread of the dandelion day tied itself to the natural human pity and awe. Her lips trembled. "Father!" she said, in the lowest of whispers. Her hand moved falteringly until, for the lightest moment, it rested upon his.