“Lady, is it true what that book says—that what is done can never be undone?”
“A thing done can never be as though it had not been, Kalliopé. But what sort of thing——?”
“But not if one goes on pilgrimage, my lady—to Jerusalem, even? to bathe in the Jordan? If one gives crowns and jewels to the icons——?”
“Nothing can undo a wrong once committed, Kalliopé. We may repent of it, and it may be forgiven, but not even God Himself can take away the consequences.”
“But if it was atoned for, lady mine, and—and forgotten? Can one never say, ‘That is done with’? May it rise up at any time to torment one?”
“That is our punishment. But, Kalliopé—” Zoe looked into the girl’s face and took the hands which were clasping her knees—“you can have no such terrible thing in your life, my dear child. But if you are planning anything of the kind, then stop. It is as you say, one can never get away from it.”
“It is so; it is so.” Danaë rose and wrung her hands. “It returns, and one cannot escape it. The Furies pursue even those who had least——” She checked herself hastily, but the tears rolled down her face as she went slowly out of the room. Before her eyes, as vividly as though it lay before her feet, she saw the rigid form of Janni’s mother prone upon the grass in her red gown, with the deeper red spreading beneath her.
But when Zoe and Linton saw her again, the fit of remorse had gone by. She was as unconcerned and impenetrable as if she had not a care in the world—as different as possible from the girl whose mental agony had impressed them both with the misgiving that there might after all be a dark shadow in her past. They watched her with lynx-eyes for a time, jealous lest the faintest contamination should approach Harold, and the next time Zoe found that Danaë had told her an untruth—now a less frequent occurrence than at first—she spoke sharply and without reflection.
“Take care, Kalliopé. I cannot keep you in the nursery unless you tell the truth.”
“Why, my lady? What will you do with me?” asked Danaë, with much interest.