He presently felt her slowly getting into bed.

A pall-like silence; then upon his cheek, in long discontinued caress, a hand whose touch was as light and soft as the fall of a rose leaf--the hand of love that toil and age cannot make harsh, and her fingers were wet with her tears.

Thus they lay in the darkness and silence, facing together the tragedy of the eternal separation.
"What did he say, dearest ?" she asked.

She had not used that word to him since the first baby came and they began to call each other "father" and "mother." All these years the children had been between them, and each had held the other important chiefly as related to them.

Now it was as in their youth--just he and she, so close that only death could come between them.
"It's a long way off," said Hiram.