My sobs were choking me, and Berna was holding my hand very tightly. Yet in a little I grew calmer.
"Berna," I said, "I've only got you now, only you, little girl. So you must love me, you mustn't leave me."
"I'll never leave you--if you want me to stay."
"God bless you, dear. I can't tell you the comfort you are to me. I'll try to be quiet now."
I will always remember those days as I grew slowly well again. The cot in which I lay stood in the sitting-room of the cabin, and from the window I could overlook the city. Snow had fallen, the days were diamond bright, and the smoke ascended sharply in the glittering air. The little room was papered with a design of wild roses that minded me of the Whitehorse Rapids. On the walls were some little framed pictures; the floor was carpeted in dull brown, and a little heater gave out a pleasant warmth. Through a doorway draped with a curtain I could see her busy in her little kitchen.
She left me much alone, alone with my thoughts. Often when all was quiet I knew she was sitting there beyond the curtain, sitting thinking, just as I was thinking. Quiet was the keynote of our life, quiet and sunshine. That little cabin might have been a hundred miles from the gold-born city, it was so quiet. Here drifted no echo of its abandoned gaiety, its glory of demoralisation. How sweet she looked in her spotless home attire, her neat waist, her white apron with bib and sleeves, her general air of a little housewife. And never was there so devoted a nurse.
Sometimes she would read to me from one of the few books I had taken everywhere on my travels, a page or two from my beloved Stevenson, a poem from my great-hearted Henley, a luminous passage from my Thoreau. How those readings brought back the time when, tired of flicking the tawny pools, I would sit on the edge of the boisterous little burn and read till the grey shadows sifted down! I was so happy then, and I did not know it. Now everything seemed changed. Life had lost its zest. Its savour was no longer sweet. Its very success was more bitter than failure. Would I ever get back that old-time rapture, that youthful joy, that satisfaction with all the world?
It was sweet prolonging my convalescence, yet the time came when I could no longer let her wait upon me. What was going to happen to us? I thought of that at all times, and she knew I thought of it. Sometimes I could see a vivid colour in her cheeks, an eager brightness in her eye. Was ever a stranger situation? She slept in the little kitchen, and between us there was but that curtain. The faintest draught stirred it. There I lay through the long, long night in that quiet cabin. I heard her breathing. Sometimes even I heard her murmur in her sleep. I knew she was there, within a few yards of me. I thought of her always. I loved her beyond all else on earth. I was gaining daily in health and strength, yet not for the wealth of the world would I have passed that little curtain. She was as safe there as if she were guarded with swords. And she knew it.