Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for the child. "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.
"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."
"What is it, Ted?—the thing that's eating into her heart? There's more here than even a mother's grief."
"She was writing a story when—when Lila exposed the boy to the fever. Of course, if she hadn't been—! Oh, poor Sheila!—poor Sheila!" he ended brokenly.
For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity. It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition, her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them from her with his very hands. Almost he lost the sense of his own sick pain in watching hers. Once he tried to take her in his arms and comfort her. "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded. "Don't suffer so!"
But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his sympathy. "I can't suffer enough!" she cried. "I can never suffer enough to atone for what I've done!"
There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room—Mrs. Caldwell and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.
"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.
"Sheila—he will need you to-morrow. You must rest—for his sake." So they sought to deceive and compel her.
"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow. But he needs me now—to die with."