“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering.
“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.”
She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost violently, “No, no! It’s too vivid—it’s too real!”
“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house, direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you have lost; you must conquer it!”
Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now.
Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was there to say?
She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly.
He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she hid her face on his shoulder.