"You can't see me now."
"I can. Your hair has drops on it, and your face—"
"No!" she cried. "Don't tell me. Don't come with me."
She ran from him at last, and he did not follow her. Like her, he was bewildered, but for him she was a light he could not put out: for her he was the symbol of that darkness which had fallen on life.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The next day had its own bewilderment and confusion, and Helen learnt that high tragedy is not blackest gloom but a thing patched and streaked with painful brightness, and she found herself capable of a gaiety which made Miriam doubly reproachful.
"You've never been like this before," she said, "and we might have had such fun. And you shouldn't be like it now, when I'm going away tomorrow." She sat in her empty box, with her legs dangling over the side. "I'm not sure that I shall go."
"You've only two pairs of stockings without holes in them," Helen said. She was kneeling before Miriam's chest of drawers.
"Doesn't matter. I shall have to buy heaps of things. D'you know, I'm afraid he's going to be strict."