Your son has fallen into a deep sleep, and you must not wake him. Perhaps it is the best sign at present. But you yourselves ought to take some rest. People who have time to sleep should _use_ it, and not waste the precious hours of the night in walking about and talking, as _I_ have to do.
We thank you, doctor. You have greatly reassured us. Are you coming again to-morrow?
Yes, and the next day as well. (_To the Old Woman_) You too ought to be in bed. Every one ought to be in bed at this time of night. Is that my way out--through that door there? I so often make mistakes!
(_Taking up the sketch-plan from his Worktable._) Look at this, my wife. It is something which I had begun upon just before our boy's accident happened. I remember stopping in the middle of that line and thinking, "I will take a little rest now, and continue it later." See how simple and easy that line was to draw! Yet how strange to look upon it and think, "Perhaps this may prove to have been the last line which I drew while our boy was yet alive!" With what an unconscious air of ill-omen do its very straightness and simplicity seem charged!
Nay; do not fret yourself, my darling, but chase away these despondent thoughts from you.
I feel sure now that the doctor spoke truth--that our boy, will recover.
Ah, but are not _you_ fretting a little, my dear one? Look at yourself in the mirror, and you will see that your face is as white as your hair, my poor old comrade.
Oh, perhaps I _am_ worrying a little; but, none the less, I feel _sure_ that our boy will recover.
Ah, how you hearten my spirits, as always you have done! How you charm away my sorrows with your sincerity and goodness! O little armour-bearer, the never-failing keeper of my faltering sword, thy old knight is in pitiful case now--his trembling hand can scarce hold his weapon. But what see I here? My son's old toys! Who put them there?
My dear one, you forget. You yourself put them there, long ago; for you said that you could work better if those innocent, childish toys lay beside you.
Yes, yes, I was forgetting. Yet I lean scarcely bear to look upon them now; even as a condemned criminal cannot bear to look upon the instruments of torture and death. When a son is dying his toys become things of horror to the father who is to be left behind. Wife, wife, I cannot bear to see them!