“Pneumonia!” he cried. “But only last night—”
“It takes you sudden,” Mrs. Brown asserted. “And Miss Selby—well, people have often said to me how blooming she looked, but well I knew it was nerve, and nerve alone, that kept her going. Nerve strength!” she sighed. “It’s a treacherous thing, Mr. Anderson. You live on your nerves, and then, all of a sudden, they snap—like that!”
And her bony fingers snapped loudly, a startling sound in the dimly lit hall. The young man was in no condition to judge of the value of Mrs. Brown’s medical opinion; he was simply panic-stricken.
He went out of the house in a sort of blind haste, and began to walk along roads strange to him, under a cloudy and somber sky. He heard the voice of the wind in the trees, and to his unaccustomed ears it held no solace, but was a voice infinitely mournful.
Pneumonia! That little, little pretty thing—so far from home—ill and alone in a boarding house. Such a young, little thing.
He remembered that morning in the woods—her face when she had looked up at him from the violets she was picking—that radiant face, clear-eyed as a child’s.
“It’s my fault!” he cried aloud. “I ought to have known she couldn’t take care of herself properly. It’s my fault! The poor little thing! She’s done some fool trick—got her feet wet—probably makes her lunch of an ice cream soda—perhaps she can’t afford any lunch. And now—pneumonia! She had no right to get pneumonia! It’s—”
He stopped short, in a still, dark little lane, clenched his hands, stood there shaken by pain, by anger, by all the unreason of grief and anxiety.
“She ought to have known better!” he shouted.
VII