"Yes. But that day I was so angry, I planned how much more free I should be if he were to die—was it not terrible, Jerry?—and then I got so interested I could not stop, and I made a dying sickness for him like my father's, and Miss Buxton came, and then I got a black frock like Hester when my father died, and then we—you and I—made a grave for him with my father's grave on the little point, and then (this was all in my mind, you see, Jerry) I was so sad I cried and cried—as I do in Marguerite, all over my cheeks, and then, what do you think?"
"Heavens, child, what can I think? I don't know," I said unsteadily, revolving God knows what of possibilities in my presumptuous and selfish heart.
"Why," she said simply, "I felt so badly that I went to Roger (in my mind) to tell him about it and show him the beautiful grave we had made and my black frock (I had a little pointed bonnet with white under the front, like the widows in Paris) and suddenly I remembered that I could not show him—he would be dead! You see that would have been very bad, for I had been planning all the time that he would be there to—to—well, that he would be there! You see what I mean, don't you, Jerry? Roger has to be there."
"Yes, I see," I said, very low, filled with sickening shame, "he has to be there, my dear."
"And so I stopped all that dying sickness directly," she continued comfortably, "because it was too silly, if I could not tell him about it afterwards, you see.
"And yet he was very cross to me about the bread," she burst out childishly. "Why do I think he has to be there, Jerry? He cannot talk to me nearly so nicely as you can—he does not understand. Why must he be there?"
I choked and laughed at once.
"Because you love him, you silly Margarita!" I declared.
"That must be it," she agreed, with a serious, long look at me out of those deep-sea coloured eyes.
Ah, me!