The little girls around her were breathing peacefully. They were still well enough to have a good time when beneficent fortune favored. They had run and played and shouted, and were healthily tired. Dil remembered how sleepy she used to be when she was crooning songs to Bess. But since the day at Central Park it had been so different. The nights were all alight with fancies, and she was being whirled along in an air full of music and sweetness.
Toward morning it stopped raining. Oh, how the birds sang at daylight! She dropped off to sleep then, but presently something startled her. She was back with the boys, and there was breakfast to get. She heard the eager voices, and sprang out of bed, glancing around.
It was only the children chattering as they dressed. Perhaps she looked strange to them, for one little girl uttered a wild cry as Dil slipped down on the floor a soft little heap.
The nurses thought at first that she was dead, it was so long before there was any sign of returning animation, and then it was only to lapse from one faint to another.
“We must have the doctor,” said Miss Mary. “And we will take her to my room. There are three children in the Infirmary, one with a fever.”
The room was not large, but cheerful in aspect. A tree near by shut out the glare of the sunshine, and sifted it through in soft, changeful shadows.
“She looks like death itself. Poor little girl! And Miss Lawrence was so interested in her. Will you mind staying a bit, Miss Virginia? There are so many things for me to do, and the doctor will be in soon.”
Virginia did not mind. She had been keeping a vigil through the night. She had taken a pride in what she called shaping her life on certain noble lines. How poor and small and ease-loving to the point of selfishness they looked now! What could there ever be as simply grand and tender as Dilsey Quinn’s love for her little sister, and her cheerful patience with the evils of a hard and cruel life?
She had been in the wrong, she knew it well. She had waited for him to make an overture; but he had gone without a word, and that had heightened her anger. Then had come a bitter sense of loss, a tender regret deepening into real and fervent sorrow. Out of it had arisen a nobler repentance, and acceptance of the result of her evil moment. She had hoped some time, and in some unlooked-for way, they would meet.
But since she had given the offence, could she not be brave enough to put her fate to the touch and