"I think I need my breakfast: I have been up a
couple of hours, and I did not sleep very much all night."
"My poor little girl; when I get you safely home in those famous rooms of
ours, perhaps you'll get some rest. But you talk in this strange way of
dying: just now you did, and once before in your letter. What makes you do
it? Is there anything the matter of which you have not told me?"
"Nothing--only my life seemed ended, Ross, as if all my places were filled
and I was no more needed, so that I had got in the way of hoping for death
as a boon which God would send me soon."
"But you do not now?--you don't want to die and leave me desolate?"
"No, dear! indeed, no! though I don't think you'd care really." He clasped
her in a closer embrace and kissed her reproachfully. "Well, yes, just at
first, perhaps. Yet so long as you want me, I want to stay and be your
willing, working wife. I've got a new reason and aim now: I have you, dear
old Ross."
"Oh, Percy, I _do_ care. God knows even the thought of it gives me a
bitter agony, I know you cannot trust me yet, because I married you so
carelessly, and because you think I can't be true to one woman with my
battered old heart. But that's because you judge me by what my long,
unloved life has made me. No good woman ever made me love her before.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55