"No," she said. "You were right to come. This is the place for you."
She drew her down upon the sofa and held both her hands.
"Do you think I would let you go now," she said, "until you had told me everything? Do you think I did not know there was something you were struggling with? When I told you of my own unhappiness, it was because I hoped it would help you to speak. If you had not known that I had suffered you could not have told me. You must tell me now. What barrier could there be between us,—two women who have—who have been hurt, and who should know how to be true to each other?"
Bertha slipped from her grasp and fell upon her knees by the sofa, covering her face.
"Agnes," she panted, "I never thought of this—I don't know how it has come about. I never meant to speak. Almost the worst of it all is that my power over myself is gone, and that it has even come to this,—that I am speaking when I meant to be silent. Don't look at me! I don't know what it all means! All my life has been so different—it is so unlike me—that I say to myself it cannot be true. Perhaps it is not. I have never believed in such things. I don't think I believe now; I don't know what it means, I say, or whether it will last, and if it is not only a sort of illness that I shall get better of. I am trying with all my strength to believe that, and to get better; but while it lasts"—
"Go on," said Agnes, in a hushed voice.
Bertha threw out her hands and wrung them, the pretty baubles she had not removed when she undressed jingling on her wrists.
"It is worse for me than for any one else," she cried. "Worse, worse! It is not fair. I was not prepared for it. I was so sure it was not true; I can't understand it. But, whether it is true or not, while it lasts, Agnes, while it lasts"—And she hid her face again and the bangles and serpents of silver and gold jingled more merrily than ever.
"You think," said Agnes, "that you will get over it?"