"Get Barry to go with you. I'd rather stay here, I think." Nan spoke quickly. She felt she could not bear to go into the rose-garden where she had given that promise to Roger which bade fair to wreck the happiness of two lives—her own and Peter's.
Kitty threw her a searching glance.
"Very well," she said. "Try to rest a little. I'll come up the moment we hear any news."
She left the room and, as the door closed behind her, Nan gave vent to a queer, hysterical laugh. Rest! How could she rest, knowing that now Peter was free—free to make her his wife—the great gates of fate might yet swing to, shutting them both out of lovers garden for ever!
For she had realised, with a desperate clearness of vision, that if Roger were incurably injured, she could not add to his burden by retracting her promise to be his wife. She must make the uttermost sacrifice—give up the happiness to which the death of Celia Mallory had opened the way—and devote herself to mitigating Roger's lot in so far as it could be mitigated. There was no choice possible to her. Duty, with stern, sad eyes, stood beside her, bidding her follow the hard path of sacrifice which winds upward, through a blurred mist of tears, to the great white Throne of God. The words of the little song which had always seemed a link betwixt Peter and herself came back to her like some dim echo from the past.
She sank on her knees, her arms flung out across the bed. She did not consciously pray, but her attitude of thought and spirit was a wordless cry that she might be given courage and strength to do this thing if it must needs be.
It was late in the afternoon when Kitty, treading softly, came into
Nan's room.
"Have you been to sleep?" she asked.
"No." Nan felt as though she had not slept for a year. Her eyes were dry and burning in their sockets.
"There's very bad news about Roger," said Kitty, in the low tones of one who has hardly yet recovered from the shock of unexpectedly grave tidings. "His spine is so injured that he'll never be able to walk again. He"—she choked over the telling of it—"his legs will always be paralysed."