And when at last Jerrie was better, and assured him so with her own sweet graciousness of manner, and put her hand upon his shoulder to steady herself as she stood up, he felt that paradise was opening to him again, and that although he had lost Jerrie as a wife, he still had her as a friend, which was more than he had dared expect.
"Are you better now? Can you walk to the house?" Tom asked.
"Oh, yes; the giddiness is gone," Jerrie replied. "I don't know what ails me this morning."
Never before could she remember having felt as she did now, with that sharp pain in her head, that buzzing in her ears, and, more than all, that peculiar state of mind which she called her "spells," and which seemed to hold her now, body and soul. Even when she returned to Maude's room her thoughts were far away, and everything which had ever come to her concerning her babyhood came to her again, crowding upon her so fast that once it seemed to her that the top of her head was lifting, and she put up her hand to hold it in its place. And still she staid on with Maude, although two or three times she arose to go, but something kept her there—chance, if one chooses to call by that name the something which at times molds us to its will and influences our whole lives. Something kept her there until the morning was merged into noon and the noon into the middle of the afternoon, and then she could stay no longer. The hour had come when she must go, for the other force which was to be the instrument in changing all her future was astir, and she must keep her unconscious appointment with it.
CHAPTER XL.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?"
JUDGING from the result, this question might far better have been put to rather than by Peterkin, as he stood puffing, and hot, and indignant in the Tramp House, looking down upon Jerrie, who was sitting upon the wooden bench, with her aching head resting upon a corner of the old table standing against the wall just where it stood that stormy night years ago, when death claimed the woman beside her, but left her unharmed.
After saying good-by to Maude, Jerrie had walked very slowly through the park, stopping more than once to rest upon the seats scattered here and there, and wondering more and more at the feeling which oppressed her and the terrible pain in her head, which grew constantly worse.
"I'm afraid I'm going to be sick," she said to herself, "I never felt this way before; and no wonder, with all I have gone through the last few weeks. The getting ready for the commencement, the coming home, and all the excitement which followed, with three men, one after another, offering themselves to me, and the drenching that night in the rain, and then watching by Maude without a wink of sleep, it is enough to make a behemoth sick, and I am so dizzy and hot—"