"Go back to that? To that loneliness, that starvation, that slavery, after knowing this?" she cried furiously, clenching her fist and starting back. Then she caught herself, looked away, and presently turned, calm, with a light of bitter mockery on her set face. "No! That is one thing I won't do!"
She dropped her fist, which had been pressed to her throat, with a short rough gesture of finality, and went directly to her door.
"Whether you come to forgive me or not," she said, "if I ever can help you, Dodo, save you from anything, come to me!"
And without waiting for an answer, she closed and locked the door.
For minute on minute Dodo remained as she had sprung up, her chin in her hand, her knuckles pressed tensely against the sharp contact of her teeth, thinking, hesitating, torn by conflicting impulses. Had Winona dramatized her story, as she herself had done a hundred times? Was it all true, or only half true? If it were true, then what had she sought with Peavey, if not to be his wife—what, then? Only Peavey could tell her, make her certain of the truth or falsity of this story. And yet, there were accents, cries of the soul, despair of the eyes, that were too poignantly felt to be counterfeited! Dodo tiptoed to the door, listening. From the other side came the regular tread of a pacing step, regular and nervous; but of weeping no sound! She remained still a moment, her hand pressed to her breast, irresistibly drawn to belief. Had Winona opened the door at the moment, she would have caught her in her arms.
Then she remembered Lindaberry, staring into the horror of the night—into the long wakeful darkness; and she said to herself, as she departed hurriedly:
"To-morrow I will go to her. It can not be a lie!"
She found Lindaberry flushed with a sudden fever, that burned brightly on his worn cheeks and in the luminous brilliant eyes, which scarcely recognized her. Doctor Lampson was there. It was an attack of influenza, brought on by exposure and the drain on his vitality, which might be serious in his present condition.
She remained obstinately all night, sharing the watches with Clarice. The fever, which flared up fiercely at first, subsided somewhat with the coming of the day, leaving him quiet, but in a dangerously weak condition. When again she had the opportunity to return to her room, she remembered Winona. The fear of what might happen to the wasted man at whose bedside she had watched, the cleansing of the spirit which the single thought of death had brought, had washed away all bitterness. She opened the door with longing, her arms ready. The room was empty, the bed untouched! In the center a trunk stood locked and corded. When she returned again in the afternoon, even the trunk had disappeared. Miss Pim, who arrived with professional, calculating eye, answered her outpouring of questions by a magnificent gesture of disdain.
"Said she was going to a house-party—for a week. That's what she said! H'm, I've got the trunk, if I haven't got two weeks' board! We shall see what we shall see! I have my suspicions!"