But one day, quite suddenly, the house had become a strange place to him
with a strange remote figure in it, his wife. For he had learned that she
must die. There had followed terrible weeks. Then Judith had faced their
disaster. Little by little she had won back the old intimacy with her
husband; and through the slow but inexorable progress of her ailment, again
they had come together in long talks and plans for their children. At this
same chessboard, in this room, repeatedly she would stop the game and
smiling she would look into the future. At one such time she had said to
him,
"I wonder if it won't be the same with the children as it has been with us.
No matter how long each one of them lives, won't their lives feel to them
unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go.
And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them.
Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are."
He had put his arm around her then and had held her very tight. And feeling
the violent trembling of her husband's fierce revolt, slowly bending back
her head and looking up into his eyes she had continued steadily:
"And when you come after me, my dear, oh, how hungry I shall be for all you
will tell me. For you will live on in our children's lives."
And she had asked him to promise her that.
But he had not kept his promise. For after Judith's dying he had felt
himself terribly alone, with eternity around him, his wife slipping far
away.
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