"Perhaps," she said. "Only I don't want to live that year."
"And when were—when are you going to do it?"
"This evening. I had meant to do it long before this. Mamma is away. There could be no better time. Besides, it must be this evening. I've written."
"To her? To tell her?"
"No," Allida answered; "not to her." And she added, "I don't love her."
"Your mother?"
"This is my dying confession, so I will say the truth. No, I don't love her. She has made me so unhappy—made life so ugly."
"Then you wrote to some one whom you do love?"
"Yes," said Allida, after another pause. Her hat had loosened as she leaned her head back, and her disordered hair was about her face; she still kept her eyes closed with her expression of weary abandonment to the peace of confession.
He looked at her keenly, with most intent interest, most intent pity, and yet with a flicker of amusement in the look. She could do it. He believed her. Yet it would be as absurd as it would be tragic if she did. It wasn't a face made for tragedy; it had strayed into it by mistake.