“And—?”
“I will answer no questions,” he growled in his surliest fashion. “I will send you food and you are to sleep again. He will see you later.”
“He—Loris; he is safe, then?”
He nodded, but would say no more, and presently I drifted back into sleep or unconsciousness.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE GRAND DUCHESS PASSES
I’ve heard it said that sick or wounded people always die if they have no wish to live, but that’s not true. I wanted to die as badly as any one ever did, but yet I lived. I suppose I must have a lot of recuperative energy; anyhow, next time I woke up I felt pretty much as usual, except for the dull throb of the wound across my forehead, which some one had scientifically strapped up. My physical pain counted as nothing compared with the agony of shame and grief I suffered in my soul, as, bit by bit, I recollected all that had happened. I had failed in my trust, failed utterly. I was left to guard her; I ought to have forbidden—prevented—her going out into the street at all; and, when the worst came, I ought to have died with her.
I tried to say something of this to Loris when I was face to face with him once more, in the room where Anne and I had been working when that ill-omened woman, Marie Levinska, interrupted us; but he stopped me with an imperative gesture.