“No!”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she demanded fiercely. “One is better dead than one’s heart strangled by this silken scarf. Why must one live forever on this desert, scanning each day the sky-line for what cannot come?”
She picked restlessly the folds of her robe, her tears falling upon her unrestful hands.
“You would not care,” she continued hopelessly. “You never even asked if I had been sick, and yet I come before you all white with troubled pallor——”
“You——”
“Oh, no!” she interrupted, scornfully, turning her head and glancing coldly at him. “I have been more than well and happy. Why—I have laughed and sung each hour of the day away; no bird in all the park has been gayer than I, and my cheeks? Oh, I whitened them; they became so ruddy. Oh, yes, how happy, how happy——”
She was looking at the Breton, pleading, tearful.
“Don’t you know,” she begged, “don’t you know that I have not laughed nor sung all these weeks? No caged bird ever—ever—I think you would have cared if you could have seen me cowering now in one corner, now in another; counting the moments for the coming of day, then longing for night. And oh, how ill I have been; now burning with fever, then cold, chilling. I did not know what had happened: one little thought parching my lips, making my heart shrink and draw high into my throat. A noise like a footfall would make it beat so painfully I could not breathe, and when I heard someone coming, I trembled all over. I grew feverish, then cold, a dimness would come over my eyes. All day and night I cried for tardy sleep—and when one begs for sleep is it not a wish for death? Oh, if you only knew,” she cried, striking the palms of her little hands passionately together. “If you only knew!” She rose from her stool and stood looking at him.
The Breton stood up, as she came close to him, her hands clasped on her breast, her eyes questioning, beseeching. He looked down at her for a moment, then raising his head, closed his eyes.
She stepped nearer, quivering, hesitant.