“You were thinking of yourself,” said Miss Amory. She felt and looked a little sick.
“Yes,” said Susan, “I was thinkin’ of how it is when a girl’s goin’ to have a child an’ can’t get away from it—can’t—can’t. She’s got to go through with it—an’ no one can’t save her. But I suppose it made her think of her death that was comin’—her death that I b’lieve she knowed she was struck for. When I’d said it she looked like some little hunted animal dogs was after—that had run till its breath was gone an’ its eyes was startin’ from its head. Her little chest went up an’ down with pantin’. I didn’t wonder when I heard after that she’d dropped in the street in a dead faint.”
“Was that the day I picked her up as she lay on the pavement?” Miss Amory asked.
Susan nodded, her face still hidden.
Old Miss Starkweather put out her hand and laid it on the girl’s shoulder.
“She has had time to forget,” she said, rather as if she was out of breath—“forget and grow quiet. She is dust by now—peaceful dust. Let us—my good girl—let us remember that happy story of how she died.”
“Yes,” answered Susan, “in Italy—lying before the open window—with the sunset all rosy in the sky.”
But her head rested on her folded arms upon her knee, and she sobbed a low, deep sob.