“What is it dear? What troubles you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
Silence. Only that tender, pitying touch.
“I knew you’d be sorry for me,” I whispered on; “and oh, I want you to be! I wouldn’t have called you if it were real, you know—I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. But nothing can hurt you now. Isn’t Love so plain to you, and the end of things, and the reasons why they must be—isn’t all that so shining clear to you that even my being like this can’t hurt? Tell me about it. I want to know it is clear to somebody—I’m so far gone in the dark.”
Still no answer.
“Then be sorry for me,” I went on, dashing my desperate pleading against that strange, disquieting silence. “I’ve borne so much. I must tell somebody, and it isn’t fair to talk about it to them here at home. I’ve never talked to anybody before, even to you. I’ve never even cried, never once, except all by myself in the dark. And I’m such a coward about everything, and specially about pain; I’ve been so afraid of it all my life. And it never stops. It’s been years, Ella, years and years. And oh, I can’t bear it any more! You don’t know what it’s like just to be still and suffer when you can’t do anything. It wasn’t so bad when I could keep going; I could fight. But now I can’t fight any more. I want to die. I think God ought to let me die.—I’ve tried; I’ve tried my best so long. And I can’t try any more.”
The words were scarcely breathed, and I stopped in exhaustion, the slow tears dropping on her breast.
Still she did not speak. Deeper and deeper sank her silence, pressed in by that strange, tender touch.
Suddenly I shivered, and my eyes flew wide. Her own were full of love and sorrow—a sorrow that looked past all my complaints to something deeper and more vital. I shrank away from her.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t any more; I can’t.”
Behind the sorrow in her eyes a light was kindled; but it only frightened me the more.