"Do you feel less well to-night, dear?" I asked, anxiously, as I took a seat beside her; but she shook her head.
"I am better, much better," was her reply, "thanks to you and Deborah and Uncle Geoffrey," but her smile was very sad as she spoke. "How good you have been to me, Esther—how kind and patient! Sometimes I have looked at you when you were asleep over there, and I have cried to see how thin and weary you looked in your sleep, and all through me."
"Nonsense," I returned, kissing her; but my voice was not quite clear.
"Allan will say so to-night when he sees you—you are not the same, Esther. Your eyes are graver, and you seem to have forgotten how to laugh, and it is all my fault."
"Dear Carrie, I wish you would not talk so."
"Let me talk a little to-night," she pleaded. "I feel better and stronger, and it will be such a relief to tell you some of my thoughts. I have been silent for nine weeks, and sometimes the pent-up pain has been more than I could bear."
"My poor Carrie," stroking the thin white hand on the coverlid.
"Yes, I am that," she sighed. "Do you remember our old talks together? Oh, how wise you were, Esther, but I would not listen to you; you were all for present duties. I can recollect some of your words now. You told me our work lay before us, close to us, at our very feet, and yet I would stretch out my arms for more, till my own burdens crushed me, and I fell beneath them."
"You attempted too much," I returned; "your intention was good, but you overstrained your powers."
"You are putting it too mildly," she returned, with a great sadness in her voice. "Esther, I have had time to think since I have lain here, and I have been reviewing your life and mine. I wanted to see where the fault lay, and how I had missed my path. God was taking away my work from me; the sacrifice I offered was not acceptable."