“Believe me, Mary,” said Camelia, the monotony of her recitative yielding to an appealing tremor, “I have told you the truth—the very truth. I have not hidden a thought from you.”
“You love him?” Mary asked, almost musingly.
“Yes, dear, yes. We are together there.”
“I never saw it; never guessed it.”
“Like you, Mary, I can act.”
“And you wanted him to marry me,” Mary added presently, pondering it seemed.
“Oh, Mary!” said Camelia, weeping, “I did. I longed for it, prayed for it—I would have given my life to have him marry you. Mary, believe me, when I tell you that to atone in however a little measure for your dreary life, I would die—oh gladly, gladly.”
“Would it not have been worse than dying?” Mary asked in a voice that seemed suddenly to subtly smile, though she herself lay unsmiling in the shadowed whiteness of the bed.
“What—worse?”
“To see him marry me.” Camelia gazed at her.