And then, after those two days, Leith's card was brought to her.
She shrank away from it, and a little cry of torture arose to her lips, but she repressed it bravely and arose, compressing her lips firmly.
"Can I be false to the dead as well as to the oath I have sworn?" she muttered to herself. "It is necessary that I should play this part through, and I will do it! You may trust me to avenge you, Olney, even if I die of self-loathing and contempt!"
"You are not well again!" Leith exclaimed, placing a chair for her as she entered the room. "You have been suffering."
"Only from neuralgia and sleeplessness," she replied, forcing herself to smile. "Insomnia is an old enemy of mine."
"And a most bitter foe," added Leith earnestly. "You need change of air. You ought to take a little trip abroad. Why don't you ask Mrs. Chalmers to take you? They talked of going a short while ago."
"Perhaps I shall, later on, but not now. I am really not ill; you must not think it."
"You have never been yourself since—since Olney died. Do you know, I have been half afraid sometimes that—that I remind you of him, because—well, you know, because we were such good friends, and because of—of some things I was traitor enough to say to you. I can't keep silent when I am near you, when I see you, and I have no right to speak when you are in this distress—when I know that you do not care for me, and for that reason I have thought it better that I should not see you for awhile. I have come to say good-bye, Carlita."
He had not dared to look at her during the speech lest his courage should fail him, but he had stammered through it like a blind man groping through an unknown world. He had not seen her growing pallor, the expression of dismay, fear, misery—what was it?—that darkened her eyes. He only heard the quiver of her voice, that dear voice whose every intonation was like a throb in his own heart, when she repeated:
"Good-bye!"