"Do you? It would be very strange, wouldn't it? I'm not pretty like you, and I've got a crooked spine—so I'm not a woman. You can hardly believe that I could be in love, can you?"
"I really don't know what to believe," stammered Hilda, "when you talk like that. I should have thought you'd have respected yourself more than to fall in love with a ni—with a mulatto, at any rate."
"I respect myself because I do love him—I love him better than it's in you to love anybody. You fool, you doll, you'll write him something very 'kind,' and think you're condescending? If that letter had been written to me, I'd have thanked God for it on my knees—God knows it's true! Yes, I love him—with all my body and all my soul, and if he had wanted me, instead of you, and I had looked no further than my own joy, I'd have given myself to him body and soul, and been proud."
"Ah, ssh!" the girl faltered, "you don't know what you're saying."
"And been proud!" she sobbed. "Yes, I do know, I mean it!... Without fear—it would have been my honour. Body and soul—his and mine—one mind, one life, one flesh!... I'd have gloried. That's love, that's human!" She shrank against the wall, and bowed her head there under the failures of her art. "Go away from me, don't stare at me! I'm a cripple, no one ever cared for me—I wish I were dead!"
In the hush of the next instant a bell rang. Their gaze met, startled. Neither spoke. Both listened intently.
The servant came up the stairs with slow, heavy feet. She said: "Mr. Lee to see Miss Hilda."
"Where is he?" murmured the girl.
"In the drawing-room, Miss."
The attic was still again after the servant went. Her footsteps struck the oilcloth of the top stairs harshly, and fell duller on the carpet, and subsided in the hall. In the silence the sisters sat looking away from each other, as strangers look.