Deirdre's sobs were her only answer.
"God doesn't love you, and I don't, and Mrs. Cameron and Davey don't love you either. Nobody loves bad, wicked, naughty little girls," Jess said solemnly.
She put her head on the pillow and was sleeping, sweetly, peacefully, in a few minutes.
Deirdre crept to the open window. She gazed out of it at the dark heave of the forest that cut her off from the being she loved and the hut in the clearing behind the school. The blue night sky that spread over her was spread over the hut in the clearing and the school too, she knew. They were not many miles away, the hut, the clearing, and the school. From gazing steadily before her and realising that fact, she glanced from the window to the ground. It was such a little distance.
Davey, going to bed in a loft in the barn saw her standing at the window, and watched her, a troubled pain at her suffering gripping his heart.
When she dropped from the window into the garden he was beside her in an instant. He caught her sobbing breath as he touched her.
"You're not going home, Deirdre?" he asked.
"Yes!" she panted, her eyes wide and dark with anguish. "I can't bear it, Davey. I can't breathe."
"He'll be angry," Davey said.
"Yes." She cried and sobbed quietly for a moment. "But I'd rather he'd be angry than send me away from him."