"Herr Gerald," he began, "you know the human heart?" Gerald frowned and surveyed him with impatience.
"Sometimes at last the little valve, as you call it--sometimes the little valve grows weak, and when the blood leaps out too quickly and can't run on quickly enough--you understand--it comes back suddenly again and drives the valve lid back the wrong way."
"Then it is a ruined piece of machinery."
"So," said the professor, sadly; "you have stated it correctly. So, Rita--she had an old heart--and it is ruined!"
Gerald gazed upon him in doubt, but fearful.
"Yes," said Virdow. "Poor Rita!" Gerald studied the face before him curiously, passed his hand across his brow, as if to clear away a cloud, and then went out across the yard. The watchers fled at his approach. In the little room he came upon the body. The woman, dressed in her best but homely attire, lay with her hands crossed upon her bosom, her face calm and peaceful. Upon her lips was that strange smile which sometimes comes back over a gulf of time from forgotten youth. He touched her wrist and watched her.
As if to converse with a friend, he took a seat upon the couch and lifting one cold hand held it while he remained. This was Rita, who had always come to wake him when he slept too late; had brought his meals, had answered whenever he called, and found him when he wandered too long under the stars and guided him back to his room. Rita, who, when his moods distracted him, had only to fix her eyes on his and speak his name, and all was peace again.
How could it be? How could anything be wrong with Rita? It was impossible! He put his hand above the heart; it was silent. He spoke her name. She did not reply.
Gradually, as he concentrated his attention upon the facts, his mind emerged from its shadows. Yes, Rita, his friend, was dead. And then slowly, his life, with its haunting thoughts, its loneliness, came back, and the significance of these facts overwhelmed him.
He knew now who Rita was; it was an old, old story. He knelt and laid his cheek upon that yellow chilled hand, the only hand that had ever lovingly touched him.
She had been a mother indeed; humoring his every whim. She had never scolded; not Rita!
The doctors had said he could sleep without his opium; they shut him up and he suffered torments. Rita came in the night. Her little store of money had been drawn on. They, together, deceived the doctors. For years they deceived them, he and Rita, until all her little savings were gone. And then she had worked for the gentlemen down-town; had schemed and plotted and brought him comfort, until the doctors gave up the struggle.