"He does not always seem to absorb a great deal of yours," Richard responded, knitting his delicate dark brows. "You treated him cavalierly enough last night, when he brought you the roses."
"I am tired of his roses!" she exclaimed, with sudden passion. "They are too big, and red, and heavy. They cost too much money. They fill all the air about me. They weight me down, and I never seem to be rid of them. I won't have any more! Let him give them to some one else!" And she threw her bunch of grapes on her plate, and dropped her forehead on her hands with a childish gesture of fatigue and despair.
Richard knit his brows again. He regarded her with a feeling very nearly approaching nervous dread. This would not do, it was plain.
"What is the matter with you?" he said. "What has happened? It isn't like you to be unreasonable, Bertha."
She made an effort to recover herself, and partly succeeded. She lifted her face and spoke quite gently and deprecatingly.
"No," she said. "I don't think it is; so you will be all the readier to overlook it, and allow it to me as a luxury. The fact is, Richard, I am not growing any stronger, and"—
"Do you know," he interrupted, "I don't understand that. You used to be strong enough."
"One has to be very strong to be strong enough," she replied, "and I seem to have fallen a little short of the mark."
"But it has been going on rather a long time, hasn't it?" he inquired. "Didn't it begin last winter?"