“ ‘By that time,’ ” she said, quoting him dismally. “You mean it’s going to be a long time?”
“Lena, I wish you’d just look at this tray. I know if you’d only look at it, you couldn’t help eating. You’d——”
“Oh, hush!” she moaned, and struck her pillow a futile blow. “Someone told me once that you people out here always were trying to get everybody to eat, that you thought just eating would cure everything. I suppose you and all your family have been eating away, downstairs there, just the same as ever. It makes me die to think of it! I’ve had delirium in fevers, but I never was delirious enough to imagine a place where there wasn’t some mercy in the heat! There isn’t any here; it’s almost dusk and hotter than ever. I couldn’t any more eat than if I were some poor thing cooking alive on a grill. What on earth do you want me to eat for?”
“Well, dearie,” he said placatively. “I think it would strengthen you and make you feel so much better, maybe you’d be willing to—to——” He hesitated, faltering.
“To what?”
“Well, you see grandma’s so terribly old—and just these last few months she’s broken so—we know we can’t hope to see much more of her, dear; and so we make quite a little fuss over her when she’s able to come here. I did hope maybe you’d feel able to go down with me to tell her good-night.”
At that, Lena struck the pillow again, and then again and again; she beat it with a listless desperation. “Didn’t you understand what I said to you about her?”
“Oh, yes; but I know that was just a little nervousness, Lena; you didn’t really mean it. I know you feel differently about it already.”
“No!” she cried, interrupting him sharply. “No! No!” And then, in her pain, her voice became so passionately vehement that Dan was alarmed. “No! No! No!”
“Lena! I’m afraid they’ll hear you downstairs.”