“What is it? Have you the papers ready for me?”
She shook her head, and spoke only after a second effort.
“I am very sorry.”
“You haven’t done them, then? Never mind. But why not? Didn’t the new machine suit either?”
I felt her hands twitch in mine. She made another movement of dissent.
“That’s odd,” I said. “It looks as if it wasn’t the fault of the tools, but of the workwoman.”
All in a moment she was clinging to me convulsively, and crying—
“You are a doctor—you’ll understand—don’t leave me alone—don’t let me stop here!”
“Now listen,” I said; “listen, and control yourself. Do you hear? I have come prepared to take you away. I’ll explain why presently.”
“I thought at first it was my fault,” she wept distressfully, “working, perhaps, until I grew light-headed” (Ah, hunger and loneliness and that grinding labour!); “but when I was sure of myself, still it went on, and I could not do my tasks to earn money. Then I thought—how can God let such things be!—that the instrument itself must be haunted. It took to going at night; and in the morning”—she gripped my hands—“I burnt them. I tried to think I had done it myself in my sleep, and I always burnt them. But it didn’t stop, and at last I made up my mind to take it back and ask for another—another—you remember?”