“Stephen, are you there?”
My lord looked shocked despite himself, as though thinking of the face that he had kissed not many days ago.
“Why, Nan, how is it with you?”
Her breathing was labored, her lips cracked and dry, and the hand that she stretched out to him swung up and down, like a branch in the wind.
“I cannot see you; my eyes are touched.”
He looked at her helplessly, half loathing the thing he saw, and yet unnerved by a blind rush of pity that beat and shook the pedestal of self.
“Stephen, don’t come near me if you are afraid.”
She might have reproached him with the pusillanimous prudence he had shown in keeping away from her until this night. And, vain woman that she had been, she felt that it was the threat alone that had brought him to her. Yet she spoke calmly at first, and feebly, like one who had come to a sense of awe and of the end.
My lord put the best dignity he could upon it, but he felt the heat and the wilfulness in him growing cold.
“You have sent for me, Nan—”