“Lie down, dear, till dinner. The heat has been too much for you. You look tired to death.”
“Heigho! I wish I was really. What’s the use of living, Nor, darling?”
“Oh, life is so beautiful!” exclaimed Eleanor, with shining eyes. “Think of Art, think of Nature! Cheer up, Olive. The horrid season will soon be over, and then hey for Devonshire!”
“And the Creamery,” added the girl, in hollow accents. “But let’s get away at once, dear.”
“We must stay for a few things yet—we promised,” Mrs. Wyndwood reminded her sweetly. “There’s the dance at Lady Surbiton’s, and the reception of—”
Olive interrupted her with a burst of laughter that sounded hysterical to her friend’s anxious ears. “Oh, it’s a mad, bad world! But there are Lady Surbiton’s tea-gowns!”
“Do lie down, dear.”
“Why aren’t there convents for unbelievers, Nor? It’s an oversight. I’d get me into a nunnery, but I should be suspected of piety. The hospitals are overrun. They are as impossible as Ramsgate; and your nurse is suspected of being a heroine. When will people understand that altruism is a passion, and that nobody wants to be patted on the back for gratifying instinct? When I did that month’s hard in the Dublin Hospital—but that was before I knew you, dear—half my family thought me mad, and the other half a saint. But I was only incapable, Nor, dearest. I couldn’t dress ugly wounds as if I wasn’t feeling the pain of them. No, I’m a failure. There’s nothing for it save suicide.”
“Or marriage,” said Mrs. Wyndwood, softly, laying her cheek to her friend’s.
Olive moved her head away, shuddering violently. “I’d breed dogs rather.” She rose to her feet and stretched her arms. “They are happy, aren’t you, Roy?” She leaned down and pulled the collie’s jaws apart. “Eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating. Why didn’t Evolution stop with you, instead of going further and faring worse? But still there are those birds, Roy. And on our side there’s Art and there’s Nature, Eleanor Wyndwood says. Which Art is it going to be, by-the-way, Eleanor Wyndwood—Poetry or Painting? But it’s two to one on Painting.”