Artificial as she often was in daily contact, in a moment like this she was splendidly, almost primitively real.

She did not conceal her own passionate despair, her conviction that her life couldn't go on without his; she did not curb her desire to know every detail on which his opinion and his doctor's had been founded; she clung to him and wept, refusing to let him discuss business arrangements, in which for some reason he seemed to find a certain respite; and yet with it all, she gave him strength, the sense that he had an indissoluble and loyal companion in the losing fight that lay before him.
Once she was aware of thinking: "Oh, why did he tell me to-night?
Things are so terrible by night," but it was only a second before she put such a thought away from her.

What had these nights been to him?
The night when she had found his light burning so late, and other nights when he had probably denied himself the consolation of reading for fear of rousing her suspicions.

She did not attempt to pity or advise him, she did not treat him as a mixture of child and idiot, as affection so often treats illness.

She simply gave him her love.
Toward morning he fell asleep in her arms, and then she stole back to her own room.