"It's from those wonderful women of Venice, then, that you get that hair. Do you remember Browning's:
"'Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.'"
There was no response to his thought in her young eyes.
"I've never read Browning," she said, negligently, "and I hate to think of 'dear dead women.' I want to think of live things, of bright things, of gay things. It seems sometimes as if I should die here among the shadows."
She was sobbing now, with her head on the table.
"Bettina," the doctor bent over her, "poor child, poor little child."
"Please let me go," she whispered.
"I can't keep you, of course. I wish I knew what to do. I wish Diana were here."
"Diana?"
"I forgot that you did not know her. She has been away for two years. She's rather wonderful, Bettina."