“No: that is why I shall stay here, till—till I go still farther away,” said the invalid gently. “And yet it cannot be really far away—not from those we love,” she added, as if speaking to herself, while her beautiful eyes seemed to be gazing at unseen things.
Imogen did not speak; and when the stranger glanced at her again, she was startled to see some large tears stealing down the girl’s face.
“My dear child!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Imogen, “I am crying. I think it is dreadful. I think nearly everything is dreadful in the world. Why should you have to die, so beautiful and so good—I can feel you are good; and why should I, though I’m not good at all, be so very unhappy?”
Then, not a little ashamed of herself, she started up.
“I shall only do you harm if I talk to you,” she said. “Good-bye. Oh! don’t you think perhaps you will get better after all?”
She held out her hand; the lady took it and held it.
“No,” she said, “that cannot be. And, believe me, there is nothing dreadful in it all to me now. The struggle is over both for me and, I hope, even for those who love me most. It is all right. But thank you for your sweet sympathy. Do not mind about me, however. You have said of yourself what I hesitated to say. I was wondering why you looked so sad, and I see it is true that you are not happy. Yet—” She glanced at Imogen’s pretty fur-trimmed winter dress, “you are not in mourning; you have your mother, and health and youth, and—plenty of things both useful and pleasant to do?”
“I don’t do them,” the girl replied bluntly. “I suppose they are there, if I cared to look for them. But I have no heart or interest in anything. I was really ill last year—last winter—rather badly, and I got into lazy ways, I suppose, and—and—oh, I’m just unhappy, and I don’t see why I should be, and why there should be so many things all wrong and sad.”
“If we could see the ‘why’ of such things, the wrongness and the sadness would be gone,” said the invalid.