"You dear optimist!" she cried, and slipped her hand into his.
"That means you think I behaved like a fool, and that my appeal won't move her in the least?"
The face beside him saddened.
"Dear, dear optimist!" she repeated, and pressed his hand. He urged an explanation of her epithet. But she only said, thoughtfully:
"You took a great responsibility!"
"Towards her?"
She shook her head.
"No—towards him!"
Meanwhile Daphne was watching beside a death-bed. On her return from her walk she had been met by the news of fresh and grave symptoms in Mrs. Verrier's case. A Boston doctor arrived the following morning. The mortal disease which had attacked her about a year before this date had entered, so he reported, on its last phase. He talked of a few days—possibly hours.
The Boysons departed, having left cards of inquiry and sympathy, of which Mrs. Floyd took no notice. Then for Daphne there followed a nightmare of waiting and pain. She loved Madeleine Verrier, as far as she was capable of love, and she jealously wished to be all in all to her in these last hours. She would have liked to feel that it was she who had carried her friend through them; who had nobly sustained her in the dolorous past. To have been able to feel this would have been as balm moreover to a piteously wounded self-love, to a smarting and bitter recollection, which would not let her rest.