Possibly she intuitively felt my distress, possibly she saw it as I tried to look as stoical as an Indian chief who is tortured on every side with burning brands. At any rate she stopped, and said hesitatingly:
"You—you do not enjoy my reading."
With a rather grim smile I replied: "Nothing but the truth will answer with you. I must admit I do not."
"Would—would you like to hear something else?" she asked, in evident embarrassment.
"Nothing is better than Hawthorne," I said. "I—I fear I'm not yet strong enough." Then, after a second's hesitation, I spoke out despairingly: "Miss Warren, I may as well recognize the truth at once, I never shall be strong enough. I've overrated myself. Good-by."
She trembled; tears came into her eyes, and she silently left the room.
So abrupt was her departure that it seemed like a flight.
After she had gone I tottered to my feet, with an imprecation on my weakness, and I took an amount of stimulant that Dr. Bates would never have prescribed; but it had little effect. In stony, sullen protest at my fate, I sat down again, and the hours passed like eternities.
CHAPTER VII
OLD PLOD IDEALIZED
Adah brought me up my dinner, and I at once noted that she was in a flutter of unusual excitement. Her mother had undoubtedly prepared her for the arrival of the expected guest, and made known also his relations to one of whom she had been somewhat jealous, and it would seem that the simple-hearted girl could not disguise her elation.