CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BLOW THAT CLEARS
Until dawn the doctor was with her, but in the afternoon, when I went into her room, I found that she had got out of bed and was dressed for motoring.
"Oh, I'm all right. There's nothing the matter with me except that I am smothering for fresh air," she said almost irritably, in reply to my remonstrances.
"But you are ill, Sally. You are as pale as a ghost."
She shook her head impatiently, and I noticed that the furs she wore seemed to drag down her slender figure.
"The wind will bring back my colour. If I lie there and think all day, I shall go out of my mind." Her lips trembled and a quiver passed through her face, but when I made a step toward her, she repulsed me with a gesture which, gentle as it was, appeared to place me at a measured distance. "I wish—oh, I wish Aunt Euphronasia wasn't dead," she said in a whisper.
"If you go, may I go with you?" I asked.
For a minute she hesitated, then meeting my eyes with a glance in which I read for the first time since I had known her, a gentle aversion, a faint hostility, she answered quietly:—