then at once ran to a window, crying: "look, you can see the whitethorn from here; I must have been dragged at least forty yards from it——" but I would no longer hear her, but drawing her down to the window-seat, said, "hear me, dear Emily: you are not well, you are still far from well, and for some days I have determined to ask you whether you do not see that it would be well for you now to end my ordeal. If I have the right——"
"Which right, Jenny?" she cried: "here is a young man who wishes to sleep two in a bed with me—two in a bed, bed, bed, bed, bed! but he will never sleep two in a bed with me, I think."
At these words I was so alarmed for her and pierced with pain, that I could only bow my head over her knees, and I used the word "mercy."
"Mercy?" said she, "is it she who lives in Cuckoo-town? But you have not waited long."
"Five years."
"Is that long? madly, dyingly long?... But it is only four."
"The fifth has long since begun."
"Has it? Truly? You might have reminded me!"
"On the morning when it began I begged of you a rose as symbol, and you would not give it."
"Is that so? But perhaps I might have given some forget-me-nots, only there were none.... You see, there's failure in you somewhere, Arthur, there's a troubled light about your eyes, you were not born to make a mother of me: you should buy an urn, Arthur, to blubber in."