So I got me ready, and Janet went part of the way, branching off at York, for Hull. I arrived at Harrogate like a person in a dream, seeking a cure. A cure from what? Inside my heart were wounds for which there never could be any cure this side the grave. I found I was nearer the breaking point than I knew, for when I got to bed there I found I was not able to get up again. The heart had gone clean out of me. I remember Himself arriving from out of some void at six o’clock in the morning, and his face as he stood over me asking me questions, taking temperatures and doing all the things the Doctor has to do when he is up against his job.
Then there were consultations and telephones and people coming in and out of the room. Strange men asking questions and looking at me, and at one another, with grave faces. I seemed so out of it all, and when I heard them say outside of the door, "We’d better tell her," something flashed through me with a thrill of unexplicable, inconceivable joy. I had come to the end, the door was ajar, and I should get away clean and forever from the fever and the fret—the holding up when you feel yourself wilting, the carrying on when there is nothing to carry on with.
Tired? There is no word that can begin to describe how tired I was. Then they came in and told me I should have to have an operation immediately—within an hour or two. I just smiled and said, "Very well."
The next thing I was being carried down the hotel stairs on a stretcher to the ambulance, where they laid me down rolled in a blanket—a nurse was at the head and Himself sitting like a grim sentinel at the foot—we never spoke to one another, not a single word. You have never seen him look like that, Cornelia—you have only heard his laugh, and seen his dancing eyes, while he tried to tease you and to imitate what he called the Yankee twang.
As for me my eyes were fixed on the tender blue of the sky—flecked with those wonderful delicious little fleecy clouds like foam flakes on an azure sea, and all the time I wondered whether soon I would be up and away beyond them.
It was to a private hospital they took me and I had to lie in a weird kind of bed there till the hour came. I had no fear or apprehension—I had just given up. Himself and I did not talk. When you have been so long together surely everything has been said. But I saw his face hard and set and sharp in the clear light, and understood that the bond had stood the test.