“Will I never get up again?”
“Yes, I may strengthen you and alleviate your pain.”
“So I must die,” Irene said, as the physician, after having prepared her medicine, left her. “Oh, dear, it’s awful to die; I wish I could live, but if I must die I wish I were back with Scott. I am sure he never would have left me alone, as I am now. He would have tried to make it pleasant for me. I wonder if he would let me go back there. Oh, it makes me shudder to think of dying out here alone; it doesn’t seem as though I could. I believe I could die easier if I could get back to Scott. 246 But, oh, I am afraid he never would speak to me again. How I wish I had never left him; and now Max has gone too; left me as I left Scott.”
She tried to think that Max would yet return, but she thought over all the cruel things he had said on that evening that he left her, and she could see no reason why he should stay so long if he ever intended to come back, and then the fact of his having taken the money was conclusive evidence of his remaining away. She wondered why it was that her mind turned so often toward Scott. She had very often thought of him and his kind acts since her sickness. She knew that she had no right to think of him, but the more she thought, the more she longed to see him, and to be in the home which she had deserted, and ere another week had gone by she had resolved to go to him, and perhaps in his generosity he would take her back to die at home.
“I think I am getting better, Mary,” Irene said a few weeks after her interview with the doctor, “I mean to break up housekeeping and go East.”
“Why, you ain’t able to travel,” said Mary.
“Yes, I am, I’ve got friends there who will not see me suffer. My father has never been to see me since Max went away, although I have sent him word at least a dozen times. I shall get enough for my household goods to take me to New York. I can hardly tell what to do, and I am too sick to live here alone.”
“But if you should take cold traveling it might be your death.”
“Oh, I shall die anyway, and I would rather die there than here,” Irene said.