"Did you never get my other letter, John?" she said, after a moment or two. "I sent it to you ten years after you left me, because--because the silence was unbearable. Did you get it?"
"Yes, I got it; and I was busy--very, very busy. It brought me the scent of the garden, and the memory of you; and then--then I set it aside for a more convenient season, and it--ah, Joan!--it was filed for reference. Forgive me--Joan!"
Her caressing hand stroked his hair more tenderly, though her eyes filled with tears.
"We shall find it here," he said a little later, when Richard had deposited a great pile of letters beside him. "I was always methodical in my work--the letter will be here. Will you look for it?" His voice was so much weaker, that she looked at him with startled eyes, and the valet, returning, held a glass of cordial to his lips.
The two were alone again after that. Amongst the pile of old and faded letters the woman had found her own--the tiny girlish scrap, written impetuously, in a girl's impatient misery of long ago.
"Send me just one word," it ran--"only one word, to tell me that you have not forgotten."
A little bitterness surged up within her as she read again the scrap of faded writing, the old agony out of the past stirred once more at her heart.
"If I might make a daisy-chain for you, Joan--my Joan! How the rooks caw to-night! Do you hear them, dear?" The weak voice spoke dreamily; the bitterness in her heart died away. She laid her face softly against the tired face on the pillow.
"My poor boy," she whispered--"my poor boy!"
"And the limes--are so sweet," he rambled on. "I think--it is--the bees--that hum so loudly in my ears. Give me a rose, sweetheart. It--is getting dark--so dark for you--out here in the garden. You must go in. The wood-pigeons are quiet now, only how white the lilies shine--against the darkness; and the bees--the bees are humming still, and the--limes--are--so sweet."
For a moment the tired voice stopped, then began again:
"Never a someone else, my Joan, only you. And the years slipped, and I forgot how fast they went; we will have hollyhocks--in our own garden, dear."
The doctor, summoned by Richard, had entered the room, but he shook his head sadly, and moved towards the door.