He fell back against Stella, who eased him onto the pillows and pulled the bed covering over his arms and tucked it under his neck. His eyes were closed; he might have been sleeping again, except that tears gathered under his lids and oozed from the corners of his eyes.

Silently, without looking at one another, everyone left except Nell and Stella. The last to leave, Sarah closed the door softly behind her, making no sound; but he had sensed that they were private again and relaxed, or rather, he had given what energies were left to him to the difficulty of simply breathing.

Felix had pneumonia and was dying. No one had said so, but everyone had thought it. Doctor Platt had come to see him twice today, although there was nothing he could do beyond putting his ear to the old man’s chest, and listening, and looking grave. There is a moment on such occasions when everyone accepts the presence and inevitability of death. An awareness of that’s having happened was what had roused Felix to protest—but now that he had been left alone with Nell and Stella, he got on as well as he could with the sorry business of dying.

Nell and Stella had been with him all of last night and today. They had drunk coffee and now and then a little brandy, but they had not felt like eating. With a sad shake of her head Penelope had said during noon dinner, “Poor Nell is particularly fond of a good squirrel stew.” Lovey and Pauline came and went in the sick room, but there was nothing they could do that made any difference, although Pauline tried earnestly and in vain to remember Ezra’s remedies for ailments of the lungs.

Sarah came in just before midnight with fresh coffee and begged Nell: “Do go to bed. Let me sit. I’ll call you if there’s any change.”

Nell did not answer, and after standing quietly a little while and seeing the coffee she had brought grow cold, Sarah left. Stella and Nell sat on either side of the bed, not speaking to each other, but not unfriendly either. There was a time of special fatigue that came to them in the early hours of the morning when they both silently, selfishly wished that he would die and let them go. Simple, brutal thoughts occur at such times about those we love.

Then came the time of night when both women so longed for day they could imagine light seeping around the edges of curtains, but it continued night, and Felix continued to breathe somehow, even though his body now quaked with the effort of it.