And then she lifts her face up to him, as if he were there; her face irradiated with a joy like that of morning. Yes, though Prue is dying upstairs, though Franky's pathetic bequest is still held between her fingers, her heart is leaping. Has not one of her dead been given back to her? Why, then, shall they not all? In that moment of supreme elation, it seems to her as if all things were possible; it seems to her as if Prue must get well, as if all her other dead joys must come crowding back to welcome that exceeding great one, that has flown to her with widespread arms out of the night of winter and despair. Prue will get well. God will make her well. With God all things are possible. There is a smile of wet radiance on her pale lips, and in her tired eyes; and she is repeating over and over again to herself, as if by repetition she would ensure their fulfilment, these lovely promises, when the door opens and Sarah looks in.
'If you please, 'm, could you come back to Miss Prue?'
'Oh yes, this minute—this minute! How has she been? how is she? Better? a little better?'
There must be something strange about her own appearance, for her servant is looking at her in undisguised amazement.
'Better, 'm?' she repeats in a wondering key; 'whatever should make you think she was better? She has had a bad bout of coughing since you left, and it has tired her out, so that it quite frightened me. That was partly why I came for you.'
Before her sentence is ended Peggy is upstairs again and at her sister's bedside; the transfiguration all dead out of her face.
'You have been a long time away,' says the sick girl feebly, and with a little of her old querulousness; 'why did you go?'
'I will not go again, darling.'
'But why did you go?' repeats the other with the pertinacity of sickness; 'where have you been?'
Margaret hesitates a moment; then: