"What are you going to do, Ranny?" she said.
"Nothing. What is there to be done?"
"Well—" She paused, breathing painfully.
"Look here, Winny, you're dead-beat and you must go home to bed. Do you know it's past ten?"
She drew herself up. "I'm not going."
"You must, dear, I'm afraid."
He smiled, and the smile and his white face made her heart ache. Also they made her more determined.
"You must have somebody. You can't be left like this all by yourself. Do you think I can go and leave you, when you're ill and all?"
"I'm all right now. I wish I could see you home, but I can't leave the house with the kids, you see, all alone."
"Ranny," she said, "I'm not going." She was very grave, very earnest, absolutely determined, and, child that she still was, absolutely unaware of the impossibility of the thing that she proposed. She was blind to herself, blind to all appearances, blind to all aspects of the case, but one, his desolation and his necessity.