The little Pilgrim raised her up, holding her by her hands; and she stood and gazed round about her, making one or two doubtful steps. She was very pale, and the light was dim; her eyes peered into it with a scared yet eager look. She made another step, then stopped again.
"I am quite well," she said. "I could walk a mile. I could walk any distance. What was that you said? Oh, I tell you I am better! I am not going to die."
"You will never, never die," said the little Pilgrim; "are you not glad it is all over? Oh, I was so glad! And all the more you should be glad if you were so much afraid."
But this woman was not glad. She shrank away from her companion, then came close to her again, and gripped her with her hands.
"It is your fun," she said, "or just to frighten me; perhaps you think it will do me no harm as I am getting so well—you want to frighten me to make me good. But I mean to be good without that—I do! I do! When one is so near dying as I have been and yet gets better—for I am going to get better? Yes! you know it as well as I."
The little Pilgrim made no reply, but stood by looking at her charge, not feeling that anything was given her to say; and she was so new to this work that there was a little trembling in her lest she should not do everything as she ought. And the woman looked round with those anxious eyes gazing all about. The light did not brighten as it had done when the Pilgrim herself first came to this place. For one thing they had remained quite close to the gate, which no doubt threw a shadow. The woman looked at that, and then turned and looked into the dim morning, and did not know where she was, and her heart was confused and troubled.
"Where are we?" she said. "I do not know where it is; they must have brought me here in my sleep—where are we? How strange to bring a sick woman away out of her room in her sleep! I suppose it was the new doctor," she went on, looking very closely in the little Pilgrim's face, then paused, and, drawing a long breath, said softly, "It has done me good. It is better air—it is a new kind of cure."
But though she spoke like this, she did not convince herself; her eyes were wild with wondering and fear. She gripped the Pilgrim's arm more and more closely, and trembled, leaning upon her.
"Why don't you speak to me?" she said; "why don't you tell me? Oh, I don't know how to live in this place! What do you do?—how do you speak? I am not fit for it. And what are you? I never saw you before nor any one like you. What do you want with me? Why are you so kind to me? Why—why—?"
And here she went off into a murmur of questions. Why? why? always holding fast by the little Pilgrim, always gazing round her, groping as it were in the dimness with her great eyes.