"That is something, no doubt," returned Linda, slowly lifting swollen eyes and looking listlessly out of the window; "but I didn't make myself count with him."
"Nonsense, child," said Miss Barry, trying to speak stoutly. "That's morbid, isn't it?"
Linda shook her head slowly, still with the dreary eyes looking into space.
Miss Barry sank into the nearest chair, and regarded the stricken girl helplessly.
"I know you suffer, too, Aunt Belinda," said the girl, at last. "I know I'm selfish, but life—everything—seems blotted out for me. It is only once in a while that I can feel anything."
Linda recalled her far-away gaze and looked at her aunt. She saw her now, not as a negligible figure with too-long earrings and too-thin hair, brushed with a New England thoroughness which concealed rather than exhibited what there was of it. Aunt Belinda was a fellow sufferer, and Linda recognized it, but without sympathy. She turned back to the sorting of the articles in the open drawer. Her handbag lay there, and a piece of paper projected from it. She took out the crumpled leaf, and remembered how on one of those remote happy days she had gone to Mrs. Porter's studio and discovered her departure. She had torn off a leaf of the calendar, and seeing no place to bestow it had crumpled it and placed it in her bag. She straightened it now, reflecting on the date, and how little she had known then that it was one of the days she would now give half her life to recall. The clearly printed words looked up at her, and her eyes rested on them heavily.
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree."
In the present passionate longing to escape from her nightmare, the words seemed significant. Oh, if they could be anything but words! If there were any hope! Her lips moved as she read the verse again. Her aunt was watching her, motionless, helpless, dim-eyed.
"Did you ever hear this, Aunt Belinda?" she asked, and read the sentences aloud in her colorless voice.
"I think I have," responded Miss Barry. "It's in the Bible, I think."