The days go by—"time does not stop for tears"—and one day there comes out of the room where Reine, the girl, was carried in senseless, a beautiful, sad-eyed woman in sables. Sorrow has touched her with its transfiguring finger. The beautiful dark eyes droop always beneath the black-fringed lashes, the lips forget to smile, the white cheeks have lost their dimples and roses. For the passionate, loving heart, life is over and done—yet she lives on.
"Death does not always bring its balm
To every aching ill—
Life may outlast its dearest charm,
And heart-break does not kill."
After a time there comes to the crushed heart a thought crowded out at first by the intensity of woe—the remembrance of Maud. Maud, whose hopes, like her own, have hung trembling on the life of Vane Charteris.
"I must go home," she says, sadly, to her friend. "Maud will need me. God only knows what has happened to her in these long months."
And Mrs. Odell, who has daily grown weaker and frailer, looking up from the couch where she rests almost all day now, cries out, sorrowfully:
"Oh, Reine, you will not let this Maud come between us? She cannot love you as well as I do."
The girl answers her a little sadly.
"I do not think she loves me at all."
"Then, why go to her?" Mrs. Odell exclaims.
"Because it seems my duty," Reine answers calmly.