"I believe it, too!" said Marie, after another interval of silence. "It seems reasonable, and surely all nature teaches it. A man may sow poor seed to-day and reap a poor harvest; but he will see his mistake, and have a chance to do better another season. I am so glad you told me—I don't seem to mind what is coming quite so much."
She lay quietly thinking for a while, and Helen hoped she would fall asleep, but presently she resumed:
"I have done you a great wrong, Helen Hungerford, for I knew about you in Paris; but I liked a good time, and I led John on—away from you. I am sorry now. And your daughter! I have never forgotten her face, that day in San Francisco, when my auto was detained beside the car she was in, and she saw her father with me—it was so ashamed, so distressed——"
"I am sure you ought to rest—do not talk any more now," Helen again pleaded, for Marie was showing signs of weakness, while she herself shrank from these references to her unhappy past.
She leaned forward to straighten her covering, which had become slightly disarranged, when Marie lifted a corner of the lace scarf she was wearing, and humbly laid it against her lips. Then she closed her eyes wearily, and was presently asleep.
The nurse, coming in soon after, felt her pulse, and, turning to Helen, observed:
"If you would like to go, I think you may; I do not believe she will waken again."
"Perhaps I will, a little later," said Helen, who was not quite ready to forsake her post so soon after telling Marie that she would remain as long as she wished her to.
An hour slipped by almost in silence, when, without a movement to show that she had wakened, Marie's white lids were lifted, and the ghost of a smile curled her lips, as her dark eyes met Helen's.
"I—shall have another—chance! I shall—begin all over—again," she breathed weakly, but with no sign of fear.