'Padding? Tiens! j'en ai déjà. But if Mathilde were to put any more, there would be nothing else. One day, Marie, you see, there will be only my clothes left to walk about—by their little selves!'
She smiled. The maid said nothing. She was on her knees buttoning her mistress's shoes.
'Now then—fini! Take all those books on to the loggia and arrange my chair. I shall be there directly.'
The maid departed. Eleanor sat down to rest from the fatigue of dressing.
'How weak I am!—weaker than last month. And next month it will be a little more—and a little more—then pain perhaps—horrid pain—and one day it will be impossible to get up—and all one's poor body will fail one like a broken vessel. And then—relief perhaps—if dying is as easy as it looks. No more pangs or regrets—and at the end, either a sudden puff that blows out the light—or a quiet drowning in deep waters—without pain…. And to-day how little I fear it!'
A prie-dieu chair, old and battered like everything else in the convent, was beside her, and above it her child's portrait. She dropped upon her knees, as she always did for a minute or two morning and evening, mostly out of childish habit.
But her thoughts fell into no articulate words. Her physical weakness rested against the chair; but the weakness of the soul seemed also to rest on some invisible support.
'What is the matter with me to-day?'—she asked herself again, in bewilderment. 'Is it an omen—a sign? All bonds seem loosened—the air lighter. What made me so miserable yesterday? I wanted him to come—and yet dreaded—dreaded it so! And now to-day I don't care—I don't care!'
She slipped into a sitting position and looked at the picture. A tiny garland of heath and myrtle was hung round it. The little fellow seemed to be tottering towards her, the eyes a little frightened, yet trusting, the gait unsteady.
'Childie!'—she said in a whisper, smiling at him—'Childie!'