Eric, and all the rest (this it was that crushed hope out of my heart)—they all knew.
And they accepted this thing.
That was the thought that again and again tore me out of my bed, and brought the great Darkness down.
In the grey intervals I was conscious of Mrs. Harborough's being more and more in the room. I came to look for her.
She spoke sometimes of my father. She imagined I was like him. To think that made her very gentle and, I believe, brought her a kind of light.
I wondered about the doctor. How had she been brought to have someone tending me who did not call himself a Healer, yet who I felt might well have cured any malady but mine?
She had forbidden the nurse to talk to me about my sister, so that I was the more surprised the day Mrs. Harborough spoke of Betty of her own accord. "If you will try to get strong," she said, "I will tell you what has been done to find her. And when you are really well I will do all that any one woman can to help."
So we talked a little—just a little now and then, about the things I thought of endlessly. And not vaguely either. She saw how vagueness maddened me. We faced things. How she had misunderstood my mother. That could never be made up now. My mother never knew why we were not with her, nor even that we were not there. Consciousness had never come back to her. I heard of all that Eric had done, and that his was the last face she knew. He had stayed with her all that night, to the end.
There were letters for me from him. Soon, now, I should have my letters.