She ran her slender fingers along a faint line at the base of Marie's fingers.
"You started with dreams—alas! so many dreams—and they have forsaken you one by one. But they will come back." And she raised her dark eyes suddenly to Marie's pale face. "A little patience and they will come back—dreams no longer, but reality. You were meant to be a happy wife and mother, my little lady, but something has intervened—something has fallen across your life like a big shadow, and for a little the sunshine will be blotted out. . ."
She broke off, and for a moment there was silence. Then she went on again, more slowly: "If you will allow your heart to govern your 240 head you can never go far astray—it is only now, when you are trying to stifle all that your heart would say, that the shadows deepen. . . ."
She smoothed Marie's hands with her soft fingers.
"You have money—much money," she said "But your friends are few. You are shy, and you do not make friends easily . . . There has been one great moment of danger in your life—I cannot tell you what it was, but I can see the sea in your hand—and again in the future I can see much water . . . It will come again in your life, and it carries on its bosom trouble and many tears, and . . ." She looked again into Marie's face.
"You are trembling, Mademoiselle," she said in her soft voice.
Marie smiled faintly.
"I was nearly drowned once," she said. "I can never forget it."
She drew her hands away. "I don't think I want to hear any more," she said.
She paid double the fee and went to join Dorothy.