“And you won’t be walking with that foreigner any more?”
“I shan’t be walking with her any more.”
Ninsy sank back on her pillow with a sigh of ineffable relief. Had she been a Catholic she would have crossed herself devoutly. As it was she turned her head smilingly towards him and extended her arms. “Kiss me,” she pleaded. He bent down, and she embraced him with passionate warmth.
“Then we belong to each other again, just the same as before,” she said.
“Just the same as before.”
“Oh, I wish that cruel doctor hadn’t told me I mustn’t marry. He told father it would kill me, and the other one who came said the same thing. But wouldn’t it be lovely if you and I, Jim—”
She stopped suddenly, catching a glimpse of his face. Her happiness was gone in a moment.
“You don’t love me. Oh, you don’t love me! I know it. I have known it for many weeks! That girl has poisoned you against me—the wicked, wicked thing! It’s no use denying it. I know it. I feel it,—oh, how can I bear it! How can I bear it!”
She shut her eyes once more and lay miserable and silent. The wood-carver looked gloomily out of the window. The cluster of stars now assumed a shape well-known to him. It was Orion’s Belt. His thoughts swept sadly over the field of destiny.
“What a world it is!” he said to himself. “There is that boy Philip gone with a tragic heart because his girl loves me. And I—I have to wait and wait in helplessness, and see the other—the one I care for—driven into madness. And she cares not a straw for me, who could help her, and only cares for that poor fool who cannot lift a finger. And meanwhile, Orion’s Belt looks contemptuously down upon us all! Ninsy is pretty well right. The lucky people are the people who are safe out of it—the people that Orion’s Belt cannot vex any more!”