The last leaf - O. Henry/3

  Joanna was sleeping when they went upstairs.

  Sue pulled the shades down and led Behrman into the other room. They peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. Cold rain was falling, mixed with snow. Behrman posed as an old miner, and Sue drew him.

  When Sue got up the next morning, after an hour's sleep, she found Joanna with dull, wideopen eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

  "Pull it up, Sue , I want to see it," she ordered, in a whisper.

  Wearily, Sue obeyed.

  Amazingly, after the heavy rain and fierce gusts of wind that had gone on all night, there wa an ivy leaf left on the brick wall. It was the last one. It was still dark green near the stem, but turning yellow at the edges. It hung bravely from a branch about six meters above the ground.

  "It is the last one," said Joanna. "I thought it wuld surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time."

  "Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her tired face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do without you?"

  But Joanna did not answer. The loneliest thing in all the world is a soul when it is getting ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were coming loose.

  The day wore away, and even throught the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its tem against5 the wall. And then,  with the coming of night, the north wind came again, and rain beat against the window.

  When it was light enough, Joanna commanded that the shades be pulled open again.

  The ivy leaf was still there.

  Joanna lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring chicken soup over the gas stove.

  "I've been a bad girl, Suzie," said Joanna. "Something has made thant last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I  was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little soup now, and some milk with a little wine in it, and - no, bring me a hand- mirror first, and pack some pillows around me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

  An hour later she said, "Suzie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

  The doctor came in the afternoon, and secretly talked to Sue in the hallway as he left.

  "Even chances, " said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another patient downstairs. His name is Behrman, he's some kind of artist, I believe. He also has Pneumonia.

  He is an old man, and weak. There is no hope for him, but we will take  him to hospital to be more comfortable."

  The next day the doctor said to Sue, "She's out of danger. You've won. Just give her golld food and care - that's all."

  And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Joanna lay, happily knitting a bright blue scarf, and put one arm right around her.

  "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia today in the hospital. He was sick for only two days. The janitor found him in the morning of the first day in his room downstairs. He was in awful pain. His clothes and shoes were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lit, and a ladder, some brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it. Look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved? Ah, daling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it the night the last leaf fell.