"Martha, you mustn't cry this way. You mustn't. You'll make yourself sick."
"No, it won't; it can't. Nothing makes me sick enough. I've tried everything."
"What? What have you tried?"
And Martha, lying cuddled against her there, recounted horrors. "At school," she sobbed, once resentfully, "there isn't any privacy. Those girls just come singing and laughing right into your room. I tried things week-ends, when I was in the city."
"Alone?"
"Yes, mammie. I thought I'd killed myself once—two weeks ago. When I tried to get up I fainted. I fell on the floor, and I thought I was dying; and I couldn't ring for anybody—they might find out."
Emily had to hear all that—to imagine it.
She said, after a while, "I'm going to take you to a doctor to-morrow—-day after to-morrow. The best one I can find."
"I'll go to Mexico; I'll hide somewhere; I'll go to South America!"
"We could never be sure we had hidden ourselves."