'I have had a good deal to worry me, to make me unhappy. I cannot sleep, I am always thinking. I can see no way out of the trouble. If there were the tiniest thread to which I could lay hold, then I should soon be well—but there is none. It reminds me of what I have read about the belief the North American Indians have concerning their origin. They were, they say, once in a vast black abyss in the centre of the earth, and there were tiny fibres hanging from the roof, and some of them laid hold of these fibres, and crawled up them, and following them came to the surface of earth and saw the sun, but others never touched a depending thread, and they wander on in timeless darkness, without a prospect, and without cognizance of life.'
'Well——'
'And I am like these, only with this pang, that I have been in the light. No—there is no fibre hanging down for me.'
She spoke timidly, and in a tone of half inquiry.
He did not answer.
'Philip, you must believe my word when I say that I never knew till the night before you heard it, that I was not what it had been given out I was.'
'We will not debate that matter again,' said Philip sharply. 'It can lead to nothing.'
'There is, then, no fibre,' she said sadly, and withdrew.
John Dale arrived, bluff, good-natured, boisterous.
'Hallo! what is the matter with you?' was his first salutation; and when he had heard what her ailments of body were—she made light of them to him—he shook his head and said bluntly, 'That's not all—it is mental. Now, then, what is it all about?'