"I cannot go away."
"Nonsense! Of course you can. You don't want to be ill all the winter?"
"I don't want to be well."
Madeleine sniffed audibly. "There's no reasoning with you. When you hear on all sides that it's for your own good——"
"Oh, stop tormenting me!" cried Louise, raising a drawn face with disordered hair. "I won't go away! Nothing will make me. I shall stay here—though I never get well again."
"But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going.—You can't!"
"Yes ... if ... if Eugen should come back."
The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, holding a sheet with both hands, as though she could not believe her ears.
"Louise!" she said at last, in a tone which meant many things.
Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. Madeleine did not look at her again, but went severely on with her bedmaking. When she had finished, she crossed to the washstand, and poured out a glass of water.