Still no answer. Opening the door she entered, but started back with a cry whose thrill of horror went to the heart like a knife.
The Butterfly had, indeed, spread silvery wings and flown, for there lay her chrysalis, cold, white and pulseless. The black knight of death had taken her out of sight. The delicate, long-ailing lungs had given way, and the inevitable end had come. She who loved the world and its foolish, fleeting pleasures had gone suddenly out of it. Whither?
It was a sad heart that Mrs. Doring carried back to New York, in spite of her knowledge that the Butterfly had but spread her wings.
Sometimes in the darkness and silence of night she talked aloud to her vanished, yet ever-present, friend.
“Where are you, Butterfly? Can you hear me and see me? Do you know how heavy is my heart sometimes? And are you happy in your new world? Is life more beautiful, more perfect there? And do you love me still?”
No voice replied, but the light, caressing, electric touches came sometimes, and the stricken heart was comforted.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PROP THAT FAILED.
“Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,” he said, and the tale is still to run.
“By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer—what have ye done?”—Rudyard Kipling.
Two years passed, and Mrs. Doring still sat at her editorial desk. Farnsworth had been the kindest and most considerate of employers. The envious said no woman ever had an easier situation. They raised their eyebrows, when they said this, implying the usual sentimental insinuations; but they were mistaken. Farnsworth’s regard for Cartice had no sentimental coloring whatever. He admired her ability and delighted in giving her a chance, and making that chance as pleasant as possible, having views on the unfair, industrial, political and social rulings from which women suffer.