At last she pushed him from her.
“Go—go!” she implored. “I can’t—don’t come back.”
“I will go,” he said. He started at the sound of his own voice. “I will not come back—unless you send for me.”
“I—I pray I never may. If I can bear it I—oh, go! only go!” she cried incoherently.
She dragged herself to the window and watched him with wide, dry eyes, as he went down the garden path. His footsteps, crunching the gravel, sounded loud and harsh in the stillness.
“He stoops like an old man. He didn’t stoop this morning,” she thought idly. “I wonder if I stoop?” She turned and glanced at herself in the little mirror opposite the window. “No; I’m young, dreadfully young. I have—how many more years to live? How old am I? I can’t count, I never could reckon.” She smiled a little to herself, and caught sight of her face in the glass. “I wonder if I’m going mad?” she murmured listlessly.
A heavy drop fell on one of the vine leaves outside, it swayed, and tossed it lower; another—and then the first low growl of thunder.
Helen hurried up the garden path, spoke a word to Madame Leroux, and opened the door of the salon.
The vine-leaf screen at the window made the room almost dark, and the patter of rain on the leaves was the only sound as she crossed to where Bridget sat crouched in her chair.
“Bid, dearest!” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the second louder peal of thunder.