She rolled the little red pencil softly between her fingers, and her face grew very soft. Yet:
“It cannot be,” she wrote; “I thank you much for the love you have shown me; but I cannot listen. You will call me mad, foolish—the world would do so; but I know what I need and the kind of path I must walk in. I cannot marry you. I will always love you for the sake of what lay by me those three hours; but there it ends. I must know and see, I cannot be bound to one whom I love as I love you. I am not afraid of the world—I will fight the world. One day—perhaps it may be far off—I shall find what I have wanted all my life; something nobler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now; I am a weak, selfish, erring woman. One day I shall find something to worship, and then I shall be—”
“Nurse,” she said; “take my desk away; I am suddenly so sleepy; I will write more tomorrow.” She turned her face to the pillow; it was the sudden drowsiness of great weakness. She had dropped asleep in a moment, and Gregory moved the desk softly, and then sat in the chair watching. Hour after hour passed, but he had no wish for rest, and sat on, hearing the rain cease, and the still night settle down everywhere. At a quarter-past twelve he rose, and took a last look at the bed where she lay sleeping so peacefully; then he turned to go to his couch. Before he had reached the door she had started up and was calling him back.
“You are sure you have put it up?” she said, with a look of blank terror at the window. “It will not fall open in the night, the shutter—you are sure?”
He comforted her. Yes, it was tightly fastened.
“Even if it is shut,” she said, in a whisper, “you cannot keep it out! You feel it coming in at four o’clock, creeping, creeping, up, up; deadly cold!” She shuddered.
He thought she was wandering, and laid her little trembling body down among the blankets.
“I dreamed just now that it was not put up,” she said, looking into his eyes; “and it crept right in and I was alone with it.”
“What do you fear?” he asked, tenderly.
“The Grey Dawn,” she said, glancing round at the window. “I was never afraid of anything, never, when I was a little child, but I have always been afraid of that. You will not let it come in to me?”