"Bill?" I said, stupidly.
"What's the matter? Didn't he tell you? You're white as a sheet!"
She jumped up from the bed and put her arms about me.
"Mavis, are you faint? Let me call Bill!"
"Please don't," I said. "I'm all right now."
The dreadful dizziness had passed: my ears stopped singing and the room assumed its normal aspect again.
"If you don't mind," I said, "I'll lie down beside you for a bit. Please don't tell anyone. I'm nervous, I suppose, and upset."
And so, it was in Mercedes Howells' arms that I finally cried myself into calmness. And Mercedes, suddenly tender and very gentle, never asked why, and, bless her heart, never told.
CHAPTER XVIII
A day or so went by, devoid of any particular incident. If Bill and I spoke to each other at all, it was to discuss our plans for leaving Cuba. The Goodriches were returning shortly from Europe: Father sent a homesick-for-me cable from Green Hill: the weather was beginning to grow very warm: in short, a hundred and one things warned us that the Spring were better spent in the North. We fixed our departure for a day not two weeks distant, and Bill went into Havana to book our passage. Even in public we had dropped the pretence of marital banter. But Wright and Mercedes, apparently absorbed in each other, did not notice: or, if they did, kept each his and her own counsel, as far as I knew.