"Unhappy—are you?" Mrs. Boucicault smiled vaguely down at the caressing hand as though it amused her.
"Why?"
"Mother—isn't it obvious?—Isn't it the most terrible thing that could have happened?"
"It doesn't seem to me terrible at all."
Anne held her ground. She was trembling with a kind of painful excitement. In her own mind there was a picture of herself fighting to bring this shallow little soul up to the heights of realization, to some dim perception of the real tragedy.
"It is terrible," she affirmed patiently. "Even if you don't love father any more you must see how awful it is to be struck down like that in a minute, without time to make his peace with any of us—and now to lie there dumb and helpless, never able to tell us things—never able to make up for anything. Isn't that pitiable? It's the very coldest way one can look at it. But you must feel more than that. After all, you did love him once. Of course he was different then, but you must try and remember him as he was in those days——"
Mrs. Boucicault patted the hand on her arm.
"That sounds quite pretty and nice, Anne. But I haven't time for remembering."
"Not time? You've got all your life. You must try and make a new picture of him. I shall. I shall think of him as the handsome, brave Tiger Sahib and learn to love him. We've got to hold together, mother, and make this awful trial bearable for him. After all, we can't tell—it may be a kind of test of us all—it may be the saving of him—of us——"
Mrs. Boucicault shook her head like a playful, obstinate child.