Meanwhile Camelia sat by Mary’s side. She divided the vigils with the nurse who came down from London. She found that her eternal self-reproach had strengthened her. She could bear its steady contemplation and soothe her mother’s more helpless grief.
Mary was sinking fast. During the next three days she hardly spoke, though her eyes followed the ministering figures that moved about her bed. Conscious that she was dying, but wrapped in an emotionless sadness, she watched them all indifferently, and slept quietly from time to time. It was going to be much easier than she had thought. Hardly a thread bound her to life; even her passionate hatred of Camelia was dimmed by the creeping mists; even her love for Perior wailed, it seemed, at a long distance from her; she listened to it as she lay there; only at moments came a throb of pain for all the happiness she had never had. Camelia meeting the calm eyes would smile tremulously, but Mary gave no answering smile, and her eyes kept all their calm.
Camelia had to hold firmly to the self-abnegation of perfect self-control to keep down the cry of confession that would give her relief, that would perhaps admit her to Mary’s heart; it was not until the third night, as she sat beside her, that the yearning allowed itself to grow to hope. Mary’s eyes, on this night, turned more than once from their vacant gaze and dwelt upon her with a fixity almost insistent.
Camelia dared, at last, to take in both her own the tragic hand that lay on Mary’s chest, and, after a timid pause, she raised it to her lips. It lay resistless; she held it against her cheek; through the dimness, Mary felt the tears wetting it.
The merciful hardness about her heart seemed to melt. She knew a keener pang, a longer aching, that did not end and give her peace again. It was not calm, after all, not good to die with that unloving frost holding one. She lay in silence, looking, in the faint light, at her cousin’s bent head, the ruffled outline of the golden hair. The thought of Camelia’s beauty bowed in this desolation touched her sharply, intolerably. She felt her heart beating heavily, and suddenly, “Camelia, I am sorry,” she said.
Camelia clasped the imprisoned hand to her breast, and leaned forward.
“Sorry! Oh, Mary—what have you to be sorry for?”
“I was wicked—I hated you—I struck you.”
“I deserved hatred, dear Mary.”
“I should not hate you. It hurts me.”