"WELL, Monica, dear, how are you?"
Sidney was bending over her friend, but the face that was raised to hers hardly seemed like Monica's. It was sharpened and lined with pain, and the misery and bitterness that flashed from her eyes struck Sidney with a fresh realisation of what she was enduring.
"I know the worst at last," Monica said in cold, biting tones. "That fool of a doctor could buoy me up with false hopes no longer. I made him tell me the truth."
"He wants you to try electrical treatment," faltered Sidney.
"Oh, don't tell me what he wants me to try! He knows, and you know, that if ever I walk again, it will be with crutches. He told me, in any case, my farming days were over."
Sidney could not speak.
"I wondered he dared say such a thing to me. I felt in such impotent fury. To tell me—I, who have never had a day's illness, who have been out of doors in all weathers, who cannot breathe with comfort indoors, who, a couple of months ago, was the strongest straightest hardiest woman in the county—that I am to spend the rest of my life on a couch by the fire, or, at the best, hobble out for an hour or two in the sun upon crutches! Why, Sidney, it is enough to turn my brain!"
Sidney's eyes filled with tears.
"I wish I could bear it for you."
"I made up my mind directly his back was turned to go straight up to London to get special advice, but the post came in and brought me this letter. You will laugh at me when I tell you that it is the last bitter drop to my cup of misery, and the climax of it all. I shall struggle no longer: The farm is going rapidly to pieces. My house, Sidney, has been destroyed. The storms have come and beat upon it, and great is the fall!"