Sybil was silent for a moment.
“It isn’t that that’s worrying me,” she went on then. “Somehow I don’t seem to care at all whether we come out right or not, so long as he gets well. Last night, when I thought he was going to die, I made up my mind that I couldn’t go on living without him. I wouldn’t have, either.”
This time the shock of surprise which came to Ruth was greater by a hundred-fold than the first had been. She gave a quick glance at Sybil. Her small face was hard, and the little white teeth gleamed between her drawn lips. It was the face, for one brief instant, of a fanatic. The sight of it affected Ruth extraordinarily. It was as if she had seen a naked soul where she had never imagined a soul to be.
She had weighed Sybil in the same calm, complacent almost patronizing fashion in which she had weighed Bailey, Kirk, everybody. She had set her down as a delightful child, an undeveloped, feather-brained little thing, pleasant to spend an afternoon with, but not to be taken seriously by any one as magnificent and superior as Ruth Winfield. And what manner of a man must Bailey be, Bailey whom she had always looked on as a dear, but as quite a joke, something to be chaffed and made to look foolish, if he was capable of inspiring love like this?
A wave of humility swept over her. The pygmies of her world were springing up as giants, dwarfing her. The pinnacle of superiority on which she had stood so long was crumbling into dust.
She was finding herself. She winced again as the thought stabbed her that she was finding herself too late.
They reached the house in silence, each occupied with her own thoughts. The defiant look had died out of Sybil’s face and she was once more a child, crying because unknown forces had hurt it. But Ruth was not looking at her now.
She was too busy examining this new world into which she had been abruptly cast, this world where dolls had souls and jokes lost their point.
At the cottage good news awaited them. The crisis was past. Bailey was definitely out of danger. He was still asleep, and sleeping easily. It had just been an ordinary breakdown, due to worrying and overwork, said the doctor, the bigger of the doctors, the one who had been summoned from New York.
“All your husband needs now, Mrs. Bannister, is rest. See that he is kept quiet. That’s all there is to it.”