She knew that it was no more than right that she should stay there with him the few short moments of life still left to them. Had she not promised to give him a whole life time of devotion?
"I had hoped," he went on, "that after we had been married many, many years, you would be sitting by me when I lay on my deathbed, and I would thank you for a long and happy life partnership."
At that moment she saw a thin streak of water trickling in through the crack under the door. This was too much for her. She threw up her arms in despair. "I can't!" she cried. "Let me go! I can't stay shut in here waiting for death. I love you, but I can't do it!"
She rushed out just as the ship heeled over before going down.
***
Young Mrs. Gordon was lying in the water, the steamer had sunk, her children were lost, and she herself had been deep under the sea. She had then come to the surface for the third time and knew that in another moment she would be sinking again, and that that would mean death.
Then her mind no longer dwelt upon her husband or children, or upon anything else of this earth. She thought only of lifting up her soul to God. And her soul rose like a liberated prisoner. Her spirit, rejoicing in the thought of casting off the heavy shackles of human existence, jubilantly prepared to ascend to its real home. "Is death so easy?" she mused.
As that thought came to her the medley of confusing noises around her—the surging of the waves, the murmur of the wind, the shrieks of the drowning, and the noises made by the colliding of the various objects that were drifting around on the water—all seemed to resolve themselves into words in the same way as shapeless clouds sometimes form themselves into pictures. And this was what she heard:
"It is a fact that death is easy, but to live, that is the difficult thing!"
"Ah, so it is!" she thought, and wondered what was needed to make living as easy as dying.