'Mrs. Burgoyne, is it kind—is it bearable—that you should say these things to me? I have not deserved them! No! no!—I have not. What right have you? I can't protect myself—I can't escape you—but—'
Her voice shook. There was in it a passion of anger, pain, loneliness, and yet something else—the note of something new-born and transforming.
'What right?' repeated Eleanor, in low tones—tones almost of astonishment. She turned to her companion. 'The right of hunger—the right of poverty—the right of one pleading for a last possession!—a last hope!'
Lucy was silenced. The passion of the older woman bore her down, made the protest of her young modesty seem a mere trifling and impertinence. Eleanor had slid to her knees. Her face had grown tremulous and sweet. A strange dignity quivered in the smile that transformed her mouth as she caught the girl's reluctant hands and drew them against her breast.
'Is it forbidden to cry out when grief—and loss—go beyond a certain point? No!—I think not. I couldn't struggle with you—or plot against you—or hate you. Those things are not in my power. I was not made so. But what forbids me to come to you and say?—"I have suffered terribly. I had a dreary home. I married, ignorantly, a man who made me miserable. But when my boy came, that made up for all. I never grumbled. I never envied other people after that. It seemed to me I had all I deserved—and so much, much more than many! Afterwards, when I woke up without him that day in Switzerland, there was only one thing that made it endurable. I overheard the Swiss doctor say to my maid—he was a kind old man and very sorry for me—that my own health was so fragile that I shouldn't live long to pine for the child. But oh!—what we can bear and not die! I came back to my father, and for eight years I never slept without crying—without the ghost of the boy's head against my breast. Again and again I used to wake up in an ecstasy, feeling it there—feeling the curls across my mouth."' A deep sob choked her. Lucy, in a madness of pity, struggled to release herself that she might throw her arms round the kneeling figure. But Eleanor's grasp only tightened. She hurried on.
'But last year, I began to hope. Everybody thought badly of me; the doctors spoke very strongly; and even Papa made no objection when Aunt Pattie asked me to come to Rome. I came to Rome in a strange state—as one looks at things and loves them, for the last time, before a journey. And then—well, then it all began!—new life for me, new health. The only happiness—except for the child—that had ever come my way. I know—oh! I don't deceive myself—I know it was not the same to Edward as to me. But I don't ask much. I knew he had given the best of his heart to other women—long ago—long before this. But the old loves were all dead, and I could almost be thankful for them. They had kept him for me, I thought,—tamed and exhausted him, so that I—so colourless and weak compared to those others!—might just slip into his heart and find the way open—that he might just take me in, and be glad, for sheer weariness.'
She dropped Lucy's hands, and rising, she locked her own, and began to walk to and fro in the great room; her head thrown back, her senses turned as it were inward upon the sights and sounds of memory.
Lucy gazed upon her in bewilderment. Then she too rose and approached Mrs.
Burgoyne.
'When shall I go?' she said simply. 'You must help me to arrange it with
Miss Manisty. It might be to-morrow—it would be easy to find some excuse.'
Eleanor looked at her with a convulsed face.