The doctor approached and looked closer at the sleeper; he bent over her for some moments.
"Marianne," he said, "loosen the hand out of the little boy's.

The woman is sleeping her eternal sleep, she will nevermore awaken on this earth.
She must have died suddenly from heart failure, while you were away to fetch me." The doctor left the quiet house at once, and Marianne did as he had told her.

She folded the hands of the departed one on her breast, then she sat down on Erick's bed, looking now at the serious face of the dead mother, now at the care-free sleeping boy, and wept quietly, until the rays of the morning sun fell into the quiet room and roused Marianne to the consciousness that a new, sad day had begun--a day on which Erick had to be told that he never again on this earth could take hold of the loving hand of his mother..