"I can see the sun all day long beyond the shadow of the house," she continued, "but I want to feel it, too. I would like it to shine on me in the early morning, and wake me up and warm me. There is no heat so grateful; and I only feel half alive in these dark, damp rooms. I never had bronchitis or was delicate at all in any way until we came here. Let me go down, won't you?"
"Well, as your cold is so much better, you may go downstairs if you like. But you mustn't go out," I answered. "How are you going to amuse yourself?"
"Oh!"—she looked around the room as if in search of something—"I don't know exactly. Work, I suppose."
"You don't read much?"
"No, not now," she answered, leaning forward with her hands clasped on her lap, and looking dreamily into the fire.
"Does that mean that you used to read once?" I pursued, "You have plenty of books here."
She looked toward the well-filled cases, "Yes," she said, "old friends, I seldom open any of them now."
"Do you never feel that they reproach you for losing interest in them?"
She smiled. "I think perhaps they are relieved because I have ceased from troubling them—from requiring more of them than they could give me," she answered, smothering a sigh.
"May I look at them?" I asked, anticipating her permission by rising and going toward them.