He had never told a lie in his life,—never even charged one to his medical conscience; but his arm clasped her more strongly, more tenderly.
[248]
]“She is in danger,” he said quietly. “We are afraid she cannot live; but there is always hope, and the next hour will decide.”
She pushed him forward.
“Go!” she said, “go!” and he kissed her forehead and went.
She paced up and down by the low pittosporum hedge that divided the garden from the shrubbery next the fence, and she held her hands so tightly together, that she felt the pain as far as her elbows.
It was full moon to-night.
She remembered when it had been new,—a little, friendly, pretty crescent. They had sat out on the verandah—four or five of them—watching it rise, and Alan had said it
“Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf.”
But Pip said he thought that man saw things straighter who found “the curled moon more like a bitten biscuit thrown out of a top-story window in a high wind.” Meg culled from “Endymion.” “The beautiful thing,” she said,