"Are you better now?"
"Yes. I want to rest."
"Try to sleep."
"It isn't sleep I want. It's rest, rest."
Helen went away, but before long she came back with a dark curtain to shroud the window.
"No, no! I want light, not shadows," Mildred cried in a shrill voice. "A dark room—" Her voice fell away in the track of her troubled memories, and when she spoke again it was in her ordinary tones. "I beg your pardon, Helen. You startled me. I think I must have dozed and dreamed."
"And you won't have the curtain?"
"No. Let there be light." She lay there helpless, while thoughts preyed on her, as vultures might prey on something moribund.
At dinner-time she refused to help herself to food, though she ate if Helen fed her. "The spoon is heavy," she complained.
Miriam was white and nervous. "She ought to have Zebedee," she said. "She looks funny. She frightens me."