But he would not. There was nothing that he seemed to dread so much as being alone. But the guests began to grow afraid of him. There was general and widespread fear of the smallpox in the city, and for some reason it began to be associated with his illness. As the suspicion was whispered around, all shrank from him. The proprietor had him examined at once by a physician. It was the fatal fourteenth day, and the dreaded symptoms were apparent.
"Have you no friends, no home to which you can go?" he was asked.
"No," he groaned, while the thought pierced his soul. "She would have made me one and taken care of me in it." But he pleaded, "For God's sake, don't send me away."
"I must," said the proprietor, frightened himself. "The law requires it, and your presence here would empty my house in an hour."
So, in the dusk, like poor Zell, he was smuggled down a back stairway, and sent to the "pest-house" also, he groaning and crying with terror all the way.
Zell did not die. Her vigorous constitution rallied, and she rapidly regained strength. But with strength and power of thought came the certainty to her mind of Van Barn's utter and final abandonment of her. She felt that all the world would now be against her, and that she would be driven from every safe and pleasant path. The thought of taking her shame to her home was a horror to her, and she felt sure that Edith would spurn her from the door. At first she wept bitterly and despairingly, and wished she had died. But gradually she grew hard, reckless, and cruel under her wrong, and her every thought of Van Bam was a curse.
The woman who helped her to write the letter greatly startled her one day by saying:
"There's a man in the men's ward who in his ravin' speaks of you."
"Could he, in just retribution, have been sent here also?" she thought. Pleading relationship, she was admitted to see him. He shuddered as he saw her advancing, with stony face and eyes in which glared relentless hate.
"Curse you!" he muttered, feebly, with his parched lips. "Go away, living or dead, I know not which you are; but I know it was through you I came here!"