"If you feel that way about it," Maurice said, putting his hand on the other's arm, "you ought not to go in."
"I will go in."
"But obedience, Phil. Think what you were saying about the lecture."
"Nobody has forbidden me," Ashe responded defiantly. "I will go in. I had made up my mind before I came. Oh, I shall do penance enough for it; you need not be afraid of that. I shall suffer enough for it."
He started up the stairs, and Maurice followed blindly, full of sympathy and dismay.
XXII
THE BITTER PAST
All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3.
They found the old woman in bed, attended by a slatternly half-grown girl, who was reading by the dying light a torn and dirty illustrated paper. There was little furniture in the chamber; merely the frowsy bed, a bare table, a single broken chair besides the one in which the girl was sitting. The floor was bare and dirty; one of the window-panes was broken and stuffed with a bundle of paper. There were a rusty stove, a few dishes on the shelf, a kettle and a tin tea-pot. On the window-sill by the bed were a medicine bottle and a cup.
"How do you do, Mrs. Murphy?" Ashe asked. "Are you any better to-day?"
"No better, thank yer riverince. I'll never be better again. My back is broke, and the pain in me is like purgatory already."