Her husband was dying, and she was alone with him. Nothing could exceed the desolation of her surroundings.

She and man who was going from her were in the third-floor-back of a New York boarding-house. It was summer, and other boarders were in the country; all servants except the cook had been dismissed, and she, when not working, slept
profoundly on fifth floor. The landlady also was out of town on a brief holiday.
window was open to admit the thick unstirring air; no sound rose from row of long narrow yards, nor from the tall deep houses annexed. latter deadened the rattle of streets. At intervals the distant elevated lumbered protestingly along, its grunts and screams muffled by hot suspended ocean.
She sat there plunged in profoundest grief that can come to human soul, for in all other agony hope flickers, however forlornly. She gazed dully at unconscious breathing form of the man who had been friend, and companion, and lover, during five years of youth too
vigorous and hopeful to be warped by uneven fortune. It was wasted by disease; face was shrunken; the night-garment hung loosely about a body which had never been disfigured by flesh, but had been muscular with exercise and full-blooded with health. She was glad that body
was changed; glad that its beauty, too, had gone some other-where than into coffin. She had loved his hands as apart from himself; loved their strong warm magnetism. They lay limp and yellow on quilt: she knew that they were already cold, and that moisture was gathering on
them. For a moment something convulsed within her. _They_ had gone too.
She repeated words twice, and, after them, "_forever_." And
while sweetness of their pressure came back to her.
She leaned suddenly over him. HE was in there still, somewhere. _Where?_
If he had not ceased to breathe, Ego, the Soul, the Personality was
still in sodden clay which had shaped to give it speech. Why could it not manifest itself to her? Was it still conscious in there, unable to project itself through disintegrating matter which was the only medium its Creator had vouchsafed it? Did