“I can’t wait any longer. I’ve waited too long. I’m losing my whole life.”
“Why don’t you go away for a few months, and then you can see? Miss Ley is going to Italy for the winter as usual, isn’t she? Upon my word, I think it would do you good to go too.”
“I don’t mind what I do so long as I can get away. I’m suffering too much.”
“Have you thought that Edward will miss you?” asked Dr. Ramsay, gravely.
“No, he won’t. Good heavens, don’t you think I know him by now? I know him through and through. And he’s callous, and selfish, and stupid. And he’s making me like himself.... Oh, Dr. Ramsay, please help me.”
“Does Miss Ley know?” asked the doctor, remembering what she had told him on her visit to Court Leys.
“No, I’m sure she doesn’t. She thinks we adore one another. And I don’t want her to know. I’m such a coward now. Years ago I never cared a straw for what any one in the world thought of me; but my spirit is utterly broken. Oh, get me away from here, Dr. Ramsay, get me away.”
She burst into tears, weeping as she had been long unaccustomed to do; she was utterly exhausted after the outburst of all that for years she had kept hid.
“I’m still so young, and I almost feel an old woman. Sometimes I should like to lie down and die, and have done with it all.”
A month later Bertha was in Rome. But at first she was hardly able to realise the change in her condition. Her life at Court Leys had impressed itself upon her with such ghastly distinctness that she could not imagine its cessation. She was like a prisoner so long immured that freedom dazes him, and he looks for his chains, and cannot understand that he is free.