“I am demoralized,” she kept repeating. Then she turned her face from the light, and neither spoke nor looked except when she absolutely had to.
Strange could make nothing at all of her, and he soon left her for sheer mercy’s sake.
When he had gone she raised herself up and rang the bell.
“Give me what I am to take and then leave me for two hours, I will sleep if I can.”
The girl brought her a bowl of beef-tea, and she plunged heroically into it.
“I am doing my duty,” she said to herself, with a sneer, “but oh, will this liquid never get less? on the contrary, it seems to increase. You won’t let me be disturbed, will you, Gill?” she said.
As soon as the girl had gone she got up and locked the door, then she rolled up her hair, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down on the floor.
“I have two hours in which to have it out with myself—this horror made manifest,” she said. “How was it that this most natural of all complications never entered my head? I wasn’t even warned by those new and altogether abominable feelings of weakness.”
She leaned her head against the ottoman and shivered, then she reached over for a shawl that lay on it, and wrapped herself up in it, but still she shivered.
She stood up and was about to go back to her bed, but she turned sharply round with another shudder, “Bah! I can’t,” she said and throwing a fur rug on to a couch she lay down there and soon grew warm enough to continue her dreary meditations.