She looked up, not understanding. Then she began to tremble in all her body; her very lips trembled, and the lids of her dazzled eyes. He was still looking at her, and she saw the dawn of the old kindness in his. He seemed to have come out on the other side of a great darkness. But all she found to say was the denial of what she was feeling. “Oh, no—no—no—”; and she put him from her.
“No?”
“It’s enough; enough; what you’ve just said is enough.” She stammered it out incoherently. “Don’t you see that I can’t bear any more?”
He stood rooted there in his mild obstinate kindness. “There’s got to be a great deal more, though.”
“Not now—not now!” She caught his hand, and just laid it to her cheek. Then she drew back, with a sense of resolution, of finality, that must have shown itself in her face and air. “Now you’re to go; you’re to leave me. I’m dreadfully tired.” She said it almost like a child who asks to be taken up and carried. It seemed to her that for the first time in her life she had been picked up out of the dust and weariness, and set down in a quiet place where no harm could come.
He was still looking at her, uncertainly, pleadingly. “Tomorrow, then? Tomorrow morning?”
She hesitated. “Tomorrow afternoon.”
“And now you’ll rest?”
“Now I’ll rest.”
With that—their hands just clasping—she guided him gently to the door, and stood waiting till she heard his step go down the stair. Then she turned back into the room and opened the door of her bedroom.