"I'm bothered if I know," she said. "But if you're not, you ought to be in the nursery. Only don't go telling people the things you've been telling me to-night, or you might get yourself into worse trouble. You'd better go to sleep now, and leave it till to-morrow. My conscience! you'd make some people sit up, you would!"
Katharine felt she had endured as much contempt as she could bear that evening; but she made a last attempt to recover some of her self-respect.
"I wish you would tell me why it is wrong to do things that are not really wrong in themselves, just because people say they are wrong?" she asked, rather sleepily.
"Because people can make it so jolly unpleasant for you if you don't agree with them," said Polly bluntly. "And if you fancy you're going to alter all that, you must make up your mind to be called a prig. You can't have a good time and defy convention as you've been doing, and then expect to get off scot free without being called a prig; it isn't likely. Most people are content to take things as they are; it's a jolly sight more comfortable, and it's good enough for them. Good-night."
"I sha'n't sleep," Katharine called after her. And Polly sniffed.
And the next thing that Katharine remembered was being awakened by her in the early morning, and told in a gruff voice that she might sit with Phyllis if she liked, until some one came to relieve her.
"All right," she replied, drowsily. "How tired you look; didn't you sleep well?"
"Sleep? There wasn't much chance of that, when she was talking gibberish all the time. She's quieter now, and you can fetch Jenny if you want anything. I must be off; I shall be late as it is. Just like my luck to get my early week when she is ill!"
And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. And yet, when Miss Jennings came and took her post in the sick-room, and she was free to go to school, she found that it was a relief to be compelled to do something, and her work seemed easier to her than she had ever found it before. She had never given a better lecture than she gave that morning; and something that was outside herself seemed to come to her assistance all day, and remained with her until her work was done. But when she returned home in the evening, the full significance of her unfortunate situation stared her again in the face; and the news that Phyllis was worse and was not allowed to see any one was so in keeping with her feelings, that she felt unable even to make a comment upon it.
"I always said that Miss Austen hadn't a spark of feeling in her," observed the girl who had given her the information; and Katharine overheard her, and began to wonder mechanically if it were true. Every faculty she possessed seemed deadened at that moment; she had no longer the inclination even to rebel against her fate. She sat on the stairs, outside the bedroom she was not allowed to enter, and took a strange delicious pleasure in dwelling upon the whole of her intercourse with Paul. There was not a conversation or a chance meeting with him, that she did not go through in her mind with a scrupulous accuracy; the pain of it became almost unendurable at moments, and yet it was an exquisite torture that brought her some measure of relief. She even forced herself to recall her last meeting with him, and was surprised in an apathetic sort of way when she found that she did not want to cry any more.